Falconry
by BC
Summary: Sequel to Assumptions. Jim is forever one of his worst enemies. It's a good thing he has supporters like Leonard and Spock, because now it seems like he has to play three-dimensional chess with Vulcan lives against a formidable opponent.
1. Prologue: Syrup

Falconry

x

Summary: Sequel to Assumptions. Jim is forever one of his worst enemies. It's a good thing he has supporters like Leonard and Spock, because now it seems like he has to play three-dimensional chess with Vulcan lives against a formidable opponent.

Disclaimer: I don't own Star Trek. I don't profit from writing this story.

Warnings: disregards Into Darkness, slash, very bad language, alcohol, xenobiology, violence, politics, philosophy, religious themes, inappropriate jokes, occasional Len's POV… uhm, flangst?

A/N: Assumptions was supposed to be a one-shot. I think it does well enough on its own. I'm almost certain that this sequel goes off somewhere beyond the final frontier…

I considered writing this after I read the reviews from sapere7 and seacat03 – this is a little bit your fault! – and their suggestions have been implemented, but the story and its characters just took lives on their own, as my stories and characters tend to. It's different. Hope that doesn't keep you from reading and enjoying it.

On another note, I do realize that I trampled all over the canon in some cases, but I plead AU-Reboot. Hence, Bajorans in the twenty-third century. And other stuff I'm pretty sure I mistimed or misplaced.

x

Prologue: Syrup

x

"The problem with having Spock on board," Jim had once said to Len, "is that he's so passionate and outspoken about his philosophy, that people who were formerly staunch propagators of _logic_ and _rationality_ become allergic to even hearing the words."

Len had written it off as the most steaming pile of bullshit he had ever heard. Then, gradually, he came to the realization that he had been wrong. It just went to show that Jim's head wasn't actually full of straw, as it often seemed to be, but that he had a pretty good idea of the people he worked with.

Two years later, Len was a very different person. So was Jim. It seemed, terrifyingly, as if the only constant in their lives was Spock.

Alright, fine. Spock wasn't exactly unchanged, either. He was still a hypocritical talking computer and basically a walking justification for all Len's xenophobic moments, but at least he was less emo about it.

"What I question," Spock said, looking with intentionally expressed distaste at the French fries with ketchup that a burly cadet was eating with his fingers, "is their persistence of belief in a doctrine that is self-contradictory to the point of nonsensicality."

"All intelligent beings need some sort of escape. It is perfectly normal." Pavel offered to share his chocolate-covered raisins, but anybody could have told him the hobgoblin wouldn't take any.

There was the thing Vulcans had about touching their food – heh, listen to them talking about rationality – but also the matter of chocolate (which was officially just an urban myth, but Len was acquainted with Jim, who had his own Vulcan to play with, so he had insider information).

"Take Keptan Kirk," Pavel continued, undeterred. He offered the bowl to his other side; the female cadet sitting there took a few raisins and popped one into her mouth, scowling all the time. "He beliewes in God. Religion is his safe place – the place vhere he occasionally goes to escape from the horror of reality. To recuperate."

Spock's eyebrow moved up; obviously that was either new information, or a new point of view. "How…"

"Illogical?" Len muttered into his salad. He couldn't help it. It was instinctive at this point – just as Jim had said it would be. Trust a Vulcan to make _rationality_ sound like a bad thing.

"Not at all," Spock replied coolly. "It is perfectly logical. And imaginative. In my opinion, this method of reconciling with the harshness of life is very artless, but very effective."

"Imagination constrained by logic, Mr Spock?" Jim's voice cut through the din of the room. "Sounds bleak." A couple of seconds later, the devil kid was leaning over the back of Len's chair, one hand on Len's shoulder as if Len was not a doctor but some kind of a goddamn armrest. Jim wasn't giving him an iota of attention, though – that was all expended on his First Officer. "And in your case, self-defeating – don't you _imagine_?"

"Do I – _imagine_, Captain?" the Vulcan asked, quirking an eyebrow.

For a reason incomprehensible to anyone who wasn't plugged into their little Spock-Kirk mental LAN, this made Jim give him the puppy eyes and retort absurdly: "Do you suppose – you go as far as to suppose, sometimes, Mr Spock?"

Spock looked at Jim with admonishment that momentarily became shadowed with amusement, which Jim of course caught and reflected back tenfold. Len didn't have the first clue what was so funny about suppositions, but then, he was well aware that these two's respective senses of humor had never been on speaking terms with sanity.

"Presently and at other times, Captain," Spock replied, joining his hands behind his back, and for some equally incomprehensible reason sending Jim into a laughing fit.

"I actually need to discuss something work-related with you," Jim said then, and the tension in between them ratcheted up to near-pornographic levels. Who did the kid think he was kidding anyway? "Do you think you could sacrifice thirty minutes of your time? An hour at the most."

Really? He was going with _that_?

Spock solemnly stood, inclined his head, and without further ado followed Jim out of the mess hall, as if they hadn't just engaged in the most round-about round of PDA Len had ever had the misfortune of witnessing. This was very unhealthy and, as the CMO, he should be implementing counter-measures…

Len mentally visualized a cliff. Then he shoved Spock off that cliff.

He instantly felt a little more optimistic.


	2. Chapter One: Tea

Chapter One: Tea

x

_Lever_.

The word had lost and gained many meanings over the course of centuries, describing several different objects, main characteristics changing from the purpose to the phallic shape, until the self-titled Third Lost Generation during the thawing post Eugenics Wars phased it into use as the newest popular euphemism for 'homosexual man'. The following generation added a pejorative twist, and the word never quite recovered outside of the context of physics. Freud would have had wet dreams about the etymology.

And what was it with the youth of today? Didn't they have the guts to go for something seriously offensive, like 'fudge-packer' or 'cock-whore'? Well, if a cadet on his first trial run was going to say something of the sort to his Captain's face, then he might as well get hung for the ewe… metaphorically speaking. Take the scenic route off the ship. Go big, or go home.

Jim skimmed over the report once again and signed the transfer orders and the addendum of reprimand without any fuss. He didn't need – or _tolerate_ – that on his ship. It wasn't like Spock and he were the only ones victimized, but they were admittedly the most prominent (if still officially closeted) couple, and that meant that whatever scattered hostility there had been before their situation had become semi-public knowledge focused on them now.

"That's your thinking face," Uhura accused him suspiciously, sashaying from her station to the pilot's seat, where she formed a united front with Sulu. They both shot Jim mild glares.

"Vhat are you thinking?" Chekov inquired eagerly, possibly already imagining equations and theories – which, admittedly, Jim did once in a while indulge in, for fun, just because he could, and because he liked bitch-slapping people with the fact that he could. They never expected it of him.

"This is the first time I've executively transferred someone off the Enterprise," Jim faux-mused. There had been a few cadets that just weren't ready yet, a couple of transfer requests he had granted, and that one pregnant Betazoid that they had had to practically strand on a space station because her hormone fluctuations made her randomly invade people's minds and… yes, that was a memorable week.

Uhura and Chekov seemed surprised, but Sulu sagely nodded. "Blonsky and Chester, right?"

Jim nodded back. A slight shift of his expression was enough of an inquiry for his best pilot to expand.

"It's made its way through the scuttlebutt. Last night I was in Rec Room Five with a couple of guys, and they said that Tonia – you know, the yeoman cadet with the…" He started to gesture, but then he glanced at Uhura and let his hands down, affecting a somewhat plastic smile. "Anyway, Chester from Security and Blonsky from Science had tried to confront the Captain and Mr Spock about their-" He grinned. "-_alleged liaison_."

Chekov scoffed.

Uhura almost laughed. Jim could tell she wanted to.

"Needless to say," Sulu said, poking Chekov in the ribs, "the Captain and Mr Spock kicked their asses, dragged them unconscious to the brig, and left Cupcake's people to deal with the interviews."

Jim stretched in the Captain's chair as if the story had little to do with him. It hadn't been nearly as clear-cut an affair as Sulu made it sound. Foul language had been used and Spock had done his impression of a statue whereas Jim had un-Captainly insulted right back, and it had devolved into an all-around shit-storm.

He owed Cupcake a fistful of Rec Room chips for smoothing it out enough to give them this chance on a peaceful resolution.

Spock was busy meditating it off.

Jim privately suspected that Spock was spending more time castigating himself than meditating, but that was because Spock couldn't always really tell the line between his offending cultural taboos and people getting bent out of shape over their own bullshit.

"They hawe a problem vith the Keptin and Mr Spock?" Chekov asked, wide-eyed at the implications. "B-but…"

Sulu shrugged.

Jim did his best to give the kid a reassuring smile. "That's the bigotry of the twenty-third century for you. It's okay to do it with aliens… as long as they're female."

Chekov opened his mouth to protest, but Sulu poked his ribs again, and they fell silent while the boy wonder contemplated xenophobia and bullying. "But… xenobiology. Like, hov often the genders match not at all." He looked up, searching in the faces of his superior officers for some logical explanation.

He didn't find it. Jim believed he understood homophobia and xenophobia and a whole host of other phobias in theory, but in practice he wanted those two dicks off his ship.

Uhura leant back against Sulu's console and crossed her arms. "What I don't understand is why they didn't wash out. Starfleet has psych evals for a reason. They kicked out Marlena readily enough."

"Marlena was a sociopath with sadistic tendencies," said a girl that Jim placed as one of the so-called prodigies from Communications, who was assigned to shadow Uhura during her daily duties to find out if she wanted to be placed on a ship or stay at the Academy as a member of the staff. It paid to have relatives in the Admiralty. "Ralf said she was a serial killer in the making."

"Homophobia seems sociopathic enough to me," Uhura retorted shortly, and Jim had a feeling that she disliked her trainee. He made a mental note to ask her about it later, in private. Well, as private as she ever allowed.

"Who's Ralf?" Chekov asked.

The girl – Cadet Maloney, Jim was almost sure – started explaining about her 'coincidental' contacts in the higher rungs of Archives and Legal and the convoluted way in which the gossip that should have been covered by doctor-patient confidentiality had reached her. Jim didn't tune her out only because she was giving him free information (blackmail was such an unwieldy word) that would have otherwise been pricy to gain.

Jim's comm beeped somewhere toward the conclusion of the story, and by then he was glad to have a legitimate reason to check out of the conversation.

"Kirk-"

"Get the fuck down here," Bones snapped and logged off.

Jim was on his feet before he had even started to process the whys and wherefores. He had the 'gesturing Sulu to take the conn' sign down to an art, and Sulu was nodding before he had even completed it. He felt the anxiety building behind him as he entered the turbolift and snarled at the computer, but he simply did not have the capacity to defuse the tension.

Five words from Bones. Five words in the form of an uncompromising order. Bones did order all the time, the mother hen, and he did hang up like that, but Jim knew his friend. He could tell an annoyed or angry Bones, a Bones vexed due to pain or raging with grief. This, however, had been an empty Bones. Emotionless. One that had hung up because he had no time. No time meant medical emergency.

Medical emergency that he had privately called Jim about meant Spock.

Jim hoped he was wrong. God, did he hope.

The profanity could have been an emphasis, Bones-style, but Bones was more prone to 'damn' or 'goddamn'. Going _straight_ for the f-bomb meant that things had gone _straight_ to the bottom of the Pit.

Jim gritted his teeth so hard that his jaw ached, and he mentally cussed out the turbolift for taking a _fucking_ eternity. 'Turbo' his ass. The trip that should have taken a few seconds stretched endlessly, and Jim felt jittery and hyper when he arrived. He entered Medical and for a while simply listened.

There was Latin and chemistry argot being slung back and forth between two doctors and three nurses gathered around a biobed.

An indeterminable while later, Jim sat down onto an unoccupied bed nearby and continued watching. There was an intense despair in the helplessness he was experiencing, and much as he hated to admit it, chances were that the only reason why he wasn't completely freaking out and bothering everyone with a fit of temper was that he trusted Bones.

He trusted Bones with his life, the lives of his crew, and occasionally with the fate of the universe.

After an eternity, Bones dismissed the nurses and sent M'Benga off with a gruff yet heart-felt thanks and a pat on the arm.

"Respiration is a vital function," Bones grumbled, pulling off the rubber gloves Jim hated because he associated them with catastrophes and personal medical examinations. The man stood by Jim and kicked his ankle – harder than necessary, but not so hard that it would have been truly painful through the boot. "By which I mean, you should start breathing now, kid."

Jim scowled up at him, but he did force himself to calm down. If Bones was trying to be witty, things weren't dismal anymore.

That was one of the things he loved about his friend. When it came to medicine, there was no bullshit.

"He gave us a scare," Bones admitted, half-sitting on the edge of the bed by Jim's side, and mostly ignored that Jim listlessly turned away from him to stare at the profile of the unconscious Vulcan lying a couple of yards from him. "Mostly 'cause we had no idea what the Hell was going on. He's in that trance thing of his right now, and you know what that means."

"He'll be alright," Jim provided dutifully. He wanted to follow that up with a terse 'report!' but he knew his CMO, and there was no need to be a redundant ass.

Bones snorted and moved off to the staff bathroom to wash his hands. He left the door open and continued talking at Jim through it while he cleaned up. "We got an alert from a yeoman who was off shift. From what I've pieced together – and I'm pretty sure the camera logs will confirm this, he's started asphyxiating, tried to get here, didn't make it too far. He did get far enough that he found someone who actually had the presence of mind to call down here for help."

Names. Jim needed to know whom to… yeah, not thank, because this was their job, and even aside of that it was basic human obligation, but he just knew that if it had been Cadet Chester whom Spock had found, the call wouldn't have been made. There were some advantages to being responsible for a whole ship, and one of them was that Jim could actually be somebody's Fairy Godmother in small and non-harmful ways. When people deserved it.

"Told the crewmen to submit a report. Whoever they were, you'll know by tomorrow."

This, Jim realized ruefully, was Bones trying to be comforting. It was a good thing that he usually stuck by his tried and true method of getting blind drunk over things he couldn't shake a hypo at.

Jim stood up. His equilibrium was so-so, but he felt like the enormous trek of roughly two yards from his location to his bond-mate's wasn't beyond him.

While Bones fielded a comm in a professional undertone, Jim critically surveyed his First Officer. Spock… well, there were no two ways about it. Spock had broken out in hives. He was only half-covered with a sheet and, as far as Jim could tell, bare-ass naked underneath, and all exposed parts of him were mold-colored, like he had been left in the fridge too long.

It looked painful and vexing, but not a condition that would have left someone with the hardiest imaginable constitution in a hospital bed. Bones had said Spock couldn't breathe.

Anaphylactic shock, Jim tentatively concluded. He knew, from research and observation and by engaging his common sense, that there were startling similarities between the biology of Vulcans and that of humans. Logically, there would have been similarities between their medical conditions.

He wanted to know what did this to Spock, so he could ensure it would never come close enough to do it again.

He needed to know who had done this to Spock, so he could go and hunt them down and kill them. Repeatedly. _In self-defense_.

"Allergic reaction to menthol, if you could believe it," Bones announced, coming up behind Jim and shaking his head in exasperation, as though Spock had done this just to be contrary.

It was the man's way, but Jim would have, ironically, much preferred more of the awkward, backhanded comforting instead.

Jim nodded. "I definitely can." He had become so used to the fact that he was the fucked-up one, the one allergic to everything, the one who couldn't even enter a room until some poor schmuck had been all over it with a tricorder, that it had never occurred to him in any real way that people around him were susceptible to the same thing. To a much less insane degree, of course, but still. Jesus, Spock had almost died because of an allergic reaction.

That was some universal irony right there.

"Where did he even get mint on this ship?" Jim asked. His fingers itched to touch Spock, but the rash really looked painful. Also, it just _looked_ contagious, and even if Jim was in theory perfectly willing to kiss black plague off of Spock's mouth, he decided to refrain.

The bond was inert, anyway. The Vulcan healing trance blocked off all non-essential brain traffic.

Jim thought, distantly, that it sounded very healthy for him to be non-essential.

"Doctor M'Benga checked out Mr Spock's cabin," Christine explained, sweeping into the room to force a PADD into Bones' hands. "It was peppermint tea. It's not programmed in any of the replicators, but the Doctor said there was a box. Real leaves."

She stood there waiting while Bones skimmed the contents of the datapad, and practically screwed her head off trying to get a good look at Spock. Obviously she wasn't entirely over her crush yet.

On a good day Jim totally understood that sentiment, and was occasionally even willing to indulge Christine with some less private gossip.

Today he gritted his teeth and counted the seconds until she left the bay. Not her fault, but he wasn't feeling indulgent. He was frustrated and in that angry phase of adrenaline withdrawal, and his mind was crunching all available data, trying to give the anger a direction. It was never a good idea to blow up at Bones – much less a Bones within and arm's length of medical equipment.

He felt confident enough to rule out self-harm, but was this an accident? Or was it a deliberate attempt to hurt Spock? _Assassination_?

Given the nature of the documents he had so recently signed, he couldn't help but linger at the idea of a hate crime.

On _his_ ship.

It took a lot to make Jim really, properly mad, but once he was there he lost touch with reality. He stopped worrying about consequences, suspended empathy and mercy, discontinued the running processes and put all into feeding his monomania. A part of him was capable of a berserk-like fugue state and, yes, it was the reason why he and a few billions of other people were still alive, but it also never ended happily. Never. Nobody wanted that.

He turned his eyes to his best friend. Bones was watching him warily, a little frightened, although whether of him or for him was anyone's guess.

Bones squeezed Jim's shoulder. "We'll wait for him to wake up. He'll tell us what happened."

Jim blinked slowly and frowned down at his First Officer's inert form. It still looked like a rather disgusting corpse. He forcefully subdued a shudder. "Is mint a Vulcan thing or a Spock thing?"

"It's not tagged anywhere, so I'd say it's just him," Bones guessed.

Jim liked to think that Spock would have known better than to ingest a potentially lethal substance, had he known that it was dangerous to him. If he had a labeled box of tea, he had of course been aware of what he was drinking.

In the great mixing pot of hundreds of planets and biosystems colliding, it was next to impossible to keep track of what was lethal to whom (as Jim experienced first-hand on roughly every third expedition), but Spock was a walking encyclopedia, with his thirst for knowledge and eidetic memory, and he was almost as familiar with Earth as he had been with Vulcan.

No, this was not an oversight.

Jim knew he should wait, but patience did not come naturally to him, and asking for it when one of his people (_the_ one) had been hurt was like asking the Klingons to please cease this pointless warfare.

And Spock, who had the best chance at mitigating Jim, was unconscious.

"…he's so _green_." _Mint_ green, added the morbid part of Jim's brain.

Bones huffed. "And he'd be in so much pain if he wasn't able to convince his CNS that those signals don't need to be interpreted." He mockingly formed a cross of his forefingers in the direction of Spock's biobed. "_Apage Satanas_. They knew back in the twentieth century that this crap is black magic."

Jim shoved him, but he did feel less volatile.

Thank God for Leonard McCoy.

"Ya know," Bones mused, deliberately pulling Jim's focus further and further away from the brink of homicidal rage, "I never dared hope he'd somehow cure you of this tendency you've got to try and turn yourself into a cadaver at least once a week… but then I never expected he would catch it from you."

Jim gave a half-hearted "Hey!" in response. This wasn't his fault. He knew it, and he knew that Bones hadn't been implying so, but it still felt awfully like salt in an open wound.

"I so wish this was the first time I've had someone almost die of goddamn _tea_."

Yes, well, Jim hadn't known about the jasmine thing before that Easter holiday. The black-currant thing he had been aware of, but he had also been three sheets to the wind and had had zero idea about where he was, much less what he was drinking. Tea had it out for him. Back then he had thought it was funny. He had developed a sense of humor about his near-death experiences long before he had met Bones, and they connected over that sense of humor.

Bones also hypocritically hated it in Jim.

"Where would he have gotten peppermint tea?"

Jim wished he were convinced that had it been a gift, he would have known about it. It wasn't like they spent every waking moment together (the mere idea was absurd) and they didn't give one another detailed reports on the time spent apart (except when they were obligated to do so in the course of duty – they had always been doing that), but Jim still couldn't imagine Spock going out and buying himself a treat of Terran herbal tea. Unless it was supposed to be a surprise… in which case Spock wouldn't have delved into it on his lonesome.

No, Jim was fairly certain the box _had_ been a gift.

Now he just had to find out from whom.

"I look like I know, kid?" Bones groused. "Wait till he wakes up and interrogate _him_."

x

Jim went to the mess for dinner. He was hungry and he knew better than to deny himself food when it was available, but right now it felt like an odious duty.

He sat listlessly, and mechanically ladled an approximation of chicken noodle soup into his mouth.

The rest of his table (informally reserved for the Bridge personnel) was empty, but the other tables around were steadily filling with young people. He knew the statistics. The average age of a crewman of the Enterprise was twenty-six years and some change. Bones was one of the 'old' ones. Since they had started out with pretty much the entire crew made out of cadets, there was next to nothing Jim could have done to prevent the Enterprise from being used as a 'teaching ship'.

Though, after one of Bones' more precious stand-up routines, seconded by a rant in half-intelligible Gaelic-accented Standard from Scotty, they only ever received _competent_ cadets anymore. Like Uhura's shadow, who just joined the mixed group of wanna-be engineers and wanna-be xenobiologists that occupied the table next to Jim's. They conversed over their meals, and Jim had to strain the limits of his education to puzzle out what they were talking about – new generation synthesizers, apparently.

Smart kids.

"Captain?" Sulu asked quietly, gauging Jim's mood.

He could read in Jim's face that no one had died, so he chanced putting down his tray and folding himself into the chair next to Jim's. Chekov followed moments later, sitting opposite.

Uhura didn't bother with the song and dance. She pinned Jim with a cold glare – frightened and angry, completely understandably – and asked: "Spock?"

"Sickbay," Jim replied. "Bones says he'll be fine." A wad of noodles slid off his spoon and fell back into his bowl with a wet splat.

Chekov turned wounded eyes to him. "But-"

"Yeah, I've no idea." Jim put the spoon down and watched the fat spots float around on the soup surface. "The Powers That Be decreed I've got to wait for him to wake up."

"He's…" Uhura cut herself off when she realized that _obviously_, Spock was still unconscious, Jim had just told her as much. "What happened?"

"That's what I'd like to know. We should move this to the conference room. Finish dinner and meet me there."

Apparently, the Alpha Shift Bridge Crew made the joint decision to speed-consume their sustenance, because less than twenty minutes later the whole group was buzzing in to Conference Room Three, which just happened to be Jim's favorite. Jim told the computer to let them in and closed the files he had been perusing – Spock's account statement. It was an unnecessary invasion of privacy, provided that Spock wake up and explain, but this way Jim learnt that Spock had been sending practically his entire salary to the Vulcan Fund.

He resolved to return to the information later, because _obviously_ that was what Spock was doing – _of course_, this was _typical_ Spock – but at the same time it pissed Jim off severely, because Spock was supposed to _benefit_ from the Fund, not _endow_ it. Jim himself had not given it much thought since he had left Earth. He had publically endorsed it during the interviews he had been ordered to give, since he had been the 'hero' most relevant to the cause, but there was not much to be said about a charity that was doing its best to not seem like a charity. The problem was not so much the collecting of finances itself; that was easy compared to tricking the Vulcans into accepting the help.

They were, as a race, _impossible_.

In this, Spock was a quintessential Vulcan.

Logic had, in Jim's opinion, sod-all to do with it.

The door opened again and Chapel shyly edged in, practically glued to the wall. Uhura beckoned her over. They sat opposite Jim, put their heads together – whispered something that he didn't catch – and Chapel slid a PADD across the table to Jim.

"Doctor McCoy's report."

Jim accepted the datapad with a nod and skimmed over the text. Nothing new. Except the _post scriptum_ that Bones, as was his wont, bolded and italicized: 'Simmer down, moron.'

Jim erased the line, added his signature and submitted the report to the official logs. Uhura's fingers tapped against her own PADD and moments later she was already reading.

"Computer," Jim spoke when Scotty took a seat and cast a worried frown at the two anxious women, "display the video from security camera OD01-T613, starting at fifteen forty ship time today."

They watched the feed in strained silence. Jim gritted his teeth and clenched his jaw when the Spock on the screen struggled for another step. He was not panicking as an asphyxiating human would. There were already patches of the rash emerging on his face. Another shuffling half-step forward, and then Spock was falling to the floor, momentarily losing consciousness.

He briefly came to upon impact, and then a semi-familiar figure of a yeoman shot into the frame and skidded on his knees to Spock's side, closely followed by a young woman in gym clothes, unidentifiable from this point of view. She was raising a comm to her face and, presumably, instructing the ship computer to sound the alarm and prioritize the direct route to Sickbay.

Jim gave himself a few seconds to indulge in pride – and yes, gratefulness mixed with relief – before he frowned and laced his fingers together. He pressed a knuckle to his lower lip and narrowed his eyes in thought.

"Computer," Chekov spoke, "display wideo from OD01-T602. Same time frame."

The boy – young man now, officially, and Jim really did try to remember – leant forwards and closely watched the feed, while Jim used the closest PADD to log into the ship computer and read the logs of Spock's cabin door.

His name was there, almost half as often as Spock's. There was Chekov three days ago, and again yesterday, this time with Cadet Katya Pugacheva and Cadet Ruka Ti Mad'kov (age-appropriate companions for Pavel, but odd company for Spock). Jim felt a little uneasy when he realized that he didn't have the first clue what that visit had been about, despite the fact that it had lasted for more than three hours.

That was the evening he had spent at the gym with Cupcake and the guys. He had to; too much sitting around on the Bridge or wasted on paperwork, and he might just forget how to punch correctly.

After the cadets and Chekov left, Spock had had another visitor – Cadet Breena Fitzpatrick.

Jim blinked. Breena Fitzpatrick? He scrolled back and, indeed – there was Cadet Breena Fitzpatrick there a week ago. And another week before that.

Was that some sort of unofficial tutoring session?

And, sure, Spock was a universally acknowledged polymath, and (fortunately secretly) prone to giving of himself until nothing was left, so it was hardly surprising that he would accede to private lessons for an exceptional student of… basically any field. Perhaps with the exception of medicine. He had primarily taught communications at the Academy, but Jim knew intimately just how accomplished the man was in diplomacy, politics, sociology, history, theoretical physics, _practical_ physics, geology, biology… whatever.

Who was Breena Fitzpatrick assigned to again?

"There," Chekov said, mouth curling in satisfaction. That facial expression would have looked downright smug on anyone else, but Pavel had absolutely no capacity for smugness, unless Russia was somehow involved. Perhaps all his smugness was being used up on nationalist pride.

"What?" Sulu asked, squinting at the wall-to-wall screen. "There's nothing."

Chekov scoffed, not even looking his way. "I cannot begin to count the vays in vhich your statement is incorrect. Hovever, that is not important now. Vhat is important is Mr Spock. And that -" he pointed at the screen, "is the turbolift his rescuers came out from. But vhy it stopped at the officers' deck? Neither of them is officer. The yeoman vas not on shift."

"That doesn't make sense," Uhura agreed.

"Have we got statements?" asked Chapel, looking a mite excited. Apparently, she was getting into the sleuth mindset.

"Not yet," Uhura replied, scrolling rapidly through the data on her PADD. "Ensign Cupcake-"

"Wait, I thought that wasn't actually his name?" Sulu interceded.

"-is busy with Blonsky and Chester."

"Yes," Chekov agreed quietly. "But no one remembers his actual name. Maybe except Mr Spock." His nose scrunched up. He seemed a little scared, a little angry, and a lot at a loss.

"Doctor M'Benga assures us that Mr Spock will be perfectly fine," Chapel said to the boy, moved by his obvious worry.

Chekov had that effect on females, and he knew how to milk it whenever necessary or profitable. Right now he gave the nurse an absent-minded smile while his fingers danced over a virtual keyboard. The video started playing anew. Pavel turned to Jim. "Keptin, I'd like a list of items Mr Spock had vith him during his… indisposition. Also, you should probably hawe both of them-" he pointed a finger at the screen, "-tested for ESP."

"That would explain why they stopped the turbolift at the officers' deck," Sulu conceded.

The _officers' deck_. Jim was going to abolish this institution on his ship as soon as he had the wherewithal. He thought it was supremely stupid to put the entire chain on command in one place on the ship. It would have been just as stupid to put all medical officers together. Or all the engineers. One hit, and incapacitation would follow.

No, he would have the cabin assignments randomized. Except, maybe, his and Spock's quarters.

"Here. See?" Chekov pointed out, and Jim belatedly realized that the kid had set the video to replay for the third time. "The officers start to come out of the cabins after the alarm is sounded. But before? No. So it vas coincidence that Mr Spock vas found. But ewery coincidence is still part of the causality stream, Keptin. And I vant to know."

So did Jim. His anger was gradually abating, and in its place grew the jitters he experienced when all his instincts screamed at him to defend himself and yet he couldn't identify a clear threat. "What I want to know is, why aren't there safeguards, so we don't have to rely on coincidence? We have sensors on this ship that can isolate human heartbeats from those of other species, that can locate any crewmember or passenger within seconds, complete with a report on their physical condition. Why don't we have automatic alerts when someone's vital functions reach critical values?"

"That is… a long and convoluted story, Captain," Chapel said softly, inching closer to Uhura, as if Uhura's moxie could protect her from some imagined attack. "There have been similar efforts in the past, of course, but counter-arguments were made and the proposals were refused."

"What could be a 'sound' counter-argument to the safety of Starfleet personnel?" Sulu inquired, a little too young and not cynical enough yet to see through the Starfleet rhetoric completely.

Chekov glanced at him with incommensurately old eyes. "Ve don't go into this job to be safe."

"Money," Uhura stated coldly.

"And politics," Chekov added.

"Is it ever anything else?" Scotty concluded. He was so happy, so in love with Enterprise and vocal about it, that few ever remembered that he had been outcast to the planetary version of a lighthouse in Siberia after he had pissed off the wrong admiral.

Jim would have to raise the topic with Bones. Chapel was competent, but Bones was a sodding genius.

Jim could just imagine the explanations about how much processing power constant monitoring of crewmembers would require and why the ship's computer could not sustain the surveillance and execute all its regular tasks with acceptable speed. Also, civilian passengers surely felt that their individual rights would have been infringed upon by such supervision.

Fortunately, Jim had the specialists who would be perfectly capable of setting up the system on _his_ ship, which was the _flagship_, and as such any civilian passenger on it could kiss Jim's ass if they felt like they were being inconvenienced.

He pulled a stylus out of the tiny drawer under the desktop and tapped his datapad. A new document opened and he started taking down names: James Kirk, S'chn T'gai Spock, Leonard McCoy, Jabilo M'Benga, Pavel Chekov, Montgomery Scott. He pulled a second PADD closer to him and found the list of cadets and their assigned trainers. He hesitated. On one hand, he didn't need the hassle of the kids snitching on him to the brass. On the other, this was probably the best learning opportunity the kids would ever have – creating something new, helpful, _real_. Ideas they would be able to take with them to their next assignment.

It depended – did the Admiralty have legislative control over the limitations of the ship's computer's programming?

Basically, Jim would have to delve back into the regulations and make sure that his project was brass-proof. Then he would be able to bring in the kids. At least now he had something to occupy him while he waited for Spock to wake up. He hadn't been looking forward to the stupor.

He sort of hated himself-in-stupor, and he wasn't the only one. Bones could soliloquize about it at length.

Jim stood and extended his hand to Chekov. "Switch datapads." His own was still logged into the system with the Captain's user ID, and offered access to all sorts of information a regular crewman shouldn't be able to access (like door logs and security camera feeds). Chekov would need that stuff if he was going to figure out his missing cause, and Jim felt that it would have been terribly convenient if Chekov did figure out the cause, because that would potentially relieve Jim of the obligation of killing someone. "If you read my private comms, I'll hack into yours. You know I can."

Pavel solemnly nodded. "Yes, sir, Keptin, sir. I mean, no, sir-"

"Get," Jim ordered him tersely, squashing down his amusement.

Chekov gave him a boyish grin.

Jim with nostalgia recalled time when the kid had grinned a lot, sincerely, and wondered which of the bad things that had happened around him had moved him to recreate it into a mask. He huffed good-naturedly, and went with Scotty. Scotty had sandwiches, and coffee that competed with its drinker about who would digest whom faster, and a Cadet that had made enough of an impression on Spock to warrant personal tutoring.

So it happened that Jim and Scotty sat above a tertiary TACAN with sandwiches and replicated paper cups of coffee, arguing about the feasibility and cost of the omnipresent internal emergency alert, when a sort-of pretty blonde in an oil-stained overall walked up to them and, tentatively smiling, said: "Sir, the relays are up'n'up. Conny wanted yea to cut a r'bon, but me thinks we gonna make do with just pushin' the but'n. Would yea do d'onour?"

Jim stuffed his mouth full of the remnants of his sandwich while he took in the young woman.

Breena Fitzpatrick was about Chekov's age, maybe a little older. Her hair was the kind of blond that Jim's only managed during high summer, and her eyes were poster-perfect cornflower blue. There was a smudge of oil on her cheek that Jim would have – even a year ago – used as an excuse to touch her and flirt.

Her hands were encased in gloves; she wielded a wrench with confidence, and Scotty looked like he wanted to pet her, so it stood to reason that she was smart around relays, too.

"Eh," Scotty replied, shuffling to his feet. "Duty calls. Yea go down and tell the Commander he better be up 'n 'bout soon."

Jim swallowed, pretending that he wasn't attempting to subtly take Fitzpatrick's measure. "Will do."

Scotty nodded and turned to the girl. Together they ambled off toward the nearest workshop. "Now, lass, ye walk me through this again-"

Jim put away the cups to prevent someone spilling stale coffee over Scotty's consoles, and decided that he had exercised all the self-restraint he was willing to muster.

He entered the Sickbay with the solemn intention to sit down next to Spock's biobed and read up on regulations, but there was already someone sitting next to Spock's bed and reading.

M'Benga looked up from a chart he was perusing at Jim, and was relieved when he saw no blood or oddly angled extremities that would require emergency surgery. Uhura climbed to her feet and put her hand on the Doctor's shoulder. "Thank you, Jabilo. I will see you later." She nodded at Jim with a succinct: "Captain."

"Nyota," he replied.

M'Benga watched her leave.

Jim knew the look in the man's eyes.

"Mr Spock is stable and on the mend," M'Benga assured him, glancing side-ways at Jim's expression to gauge just how much placating he would have to do to save himself from a fit of temper.

Jim was worried but, admittedly, not about Spock. Not anymore. He had been frantic for a while there, but now he knew that Spock was going to be fine and had moved on to other concerns. "I realize he can't sense me-"

"Ah," M'Benga cut him off with a forced, professional smile (which once again reminded Jim of how much he preferred Bones' atrocious bedside manner), "that is not entirely correct, Captain."

Raising his eyebrows, Jim perched on the side of Spock's bed. Spock was svelte; he left plenty of space for whomever might want to share a bed with him. And Jim wanted to. "Do expand, Doc."

M'Benga scowled and crossed his arms. "Since I am Mr Spock's primary physician, I am privy to several pertinent details of your relationship, Captain. It is, naturally, covered by doctor-patient confidentiality, but I am hardly breaking that in speaking with the patient's bond-mate. It is the nature of the bond that allows those involved to share even information that would otherwise be exclusively private."

That, Jim thought, was a load of bullshit. Sure, he and Spock were close, even shared brain-space occasionally, but they weren't living in one another's head. He only had the vaguest ideas about Spock's father, mother, brother and dead fiancée. He had known nothing about the damn peppermint tea, or about tutoring sessions with blonde cadets. Spock, on the other hand, knew very little about Jim's history (near to nothing about his mother, Sam, Frank, Tarsus, domestic terrorism and binge-drinking…) or about his friendship with Bones.

Spock irrationally disliked Bones. Usually the mutual morose obstinacy involved had Jim in stitches. Right now he wished he and Spock had at least one mutual friend.

"Lay it on me, then," Jim said with just a hint of mocking.

M'Benga, who wasn't yet equipped to deal with Jim's crap, scowled harder. "With all due respect, Captain… I will forward you a thesis by Doctor Cantrell, from Oasis Seventeen. If afterwards you have questions, I will, of course, be available to answer them."

Jim could tell from the man's bearing that he wasn't going to like the news.

It was barely past eight o'clock, ship-time. He had had too many bad news already today. He'd save some for tomorrow.

"I've had a long day," he said to M'Benga, and handed over his – _Chekov's_ – PADD.


	3. Chapter Two: Tears

Chapter Two: Tears

x

Bones blearily glared at Jim when he stumbled into the Sickbay in early morning, freshly showered and shaved and smelling faintly of coffee, but more asleep than awake. He scoffed. "Of course."

Jim shrugged, let his best friend go about his automatic pre-shift routine and turned back to Chekov's datapad. He had sorted out the administrative part of the installation of automatic alerts – even put in a preliminary report about doing an internal overhaul on the ship's security software, so he was covered from the brass.

Since that let him get a good use out of the cadets he was ferrying around, he checked up on their files. And discovered a whole new hornets' nest.

He should have paid closer attention before.

Sure, there had been that thing with semi-botched treaty signing on Catulla that had buried him in dank underground interrogation chambers with a committee of admirals for the whole of Enterprise's stay in Earth docks, and then a pirate ring unexpectedly escalated to terrorism, and then Jim had barely had a chance to take a deep breath before they were being sent out to tow the damaged _USS Canterbury_ to the nearest space station capable of repairing an Antares class starship… and so on. Basically, Jim had relied on his chief officers to handle the cadets, and only involve him if there were any problems.

Which, in retrospect, had turned out to be a spectacularly impetuous idea.

"Of course you've been here all night," Bones grumbled, shuffling over to squint at Spock's chart, as if there was any info there other than 'healing trance'. As patients went, Spock was boring, and Bones seemed to detest him for it, but then Bones generally liked to find faults with him.

Spock hadn't moved a muscle since Jim had sat down. If not for the pretty flickering lights above his biobed, it would have been hard to believe he was even alive.

"Married people…" the doctor muttered disgustedly. "Damned goblins. Trance my ass."

"Say, Bones," Jim said, because sometimes ignoring Bones really was the better part of valor, "you've got cadets here in Medical."

The man turned to Jim and scowled.

"Assessment?" Jim asked.

There were times when his friend just wasn't at his brightest. He was lovable like this: a big, grumpy teddy-bear with a really foul mouth and a tendency to take the silliest crap personally. Also, he was prone to ranting.

Bones rubbed a hand over his face and sighed. "Sanchez. Good with chemistry, but a little too enthusiastic about autopsies."

"We haven't lost a crewmember in…" Jim knew this exactly, down to the day and hour, but there was no need to channel Spock when Spock was present just a couple of feet to the side. "…six weeks."

"Which is why I get a vibe from the guy. Can't shut up about cutting up dead bodies. And…"

Jim, who had an idea about Bones' stance on autopsies, swallowed. They absolutely didn't need to nurture a future Doctor Mengele on their ship. On a related note, he should have someone check on the security in the zoology labs. It usually started with pets, but after the tribble experience, exceptions for pets on board had been doled out sparsely. Hence specimens would probably be the next targets.

"And what?" Jim prompted when he realized that Bones had trailed off without any intention to continue.

The man shook his head. "Yeah, no. The last thing I need is you freaking out."

"I'm freaking out now," Jim replied. He managed to keep an even tone, but he was having visions of eviscerated guinea pigs and experimental vivisection going on in the less-frequented science labs.

"Brent's not so bad," Bones switched tracks, voice lowering. He glanced at Spock's face – expressionless, still green but much less virulently so than it had been yesterday – and raised his tricorder. It chirped and whizzed.

Jim stared at his best friend, wishing to somehow overcome his lack of telepathic prowess and _make_ the stubborn ass talk to him through sheer bloody-mindedness.

"Kid's doing command track and medical engineering at the same time. Clever enough. The nurses like him."

The tricorder purred and powered down. The lights above Spock's bed continued flickering.

Jim was tired enough to consider bathing in coffee in the hopes that he would absorb the caffeine through his skin, but he refused to back down. He had delegated the care and feeding of cadets for too long, and that had brought him here: two kids in the brig, three making secret personal visits to Spock and one on the way to dismembering someone in the name of scientific enquiry.

"He's been asking to get posted to the Bridge for a while, but Chekov doesn't have the time to take on another student. Or the inclination, let's face it. One of the sanest damn people on this ship, and he's barely out of his teens. Goddamn kindergarten in goddamn space-"

"What's wrong with Sanchez?" Jim cut in, climbing to his feet. He didn't have a hope in Hell of intimidating Bones, but he was still the sodding Captain of this ship, and if there was a concern about the safety of the crew, it was his blasted duty to solve it. Whatever it was.

Bones' forehead wrinkled and the bleary glare returned to his eyes, this time not as sleepy as before and far grittier. "He's way too interested in Vulcans," he admitted quietly.

About ten seconds later Jim resumed breathing. He looked down at his better half's still form. Blinked. Looked up into Bones' face. Heard the roar of blood rushing through his temples, and dug his fingers into his thighs, bruising himself in lieu of Bones' face.

"Interested in having a convenient cadaver, perhaps?" Jim said softly, inclining his head. His lips stretched in a slow, lazy smile.

Bones took a step closer.

The room blurred.

"Bones."

"Yeah, Jim?"

"Hit me."

There was a sting in Jim's neck, and everything went black.

x

"Can I just say, Capt'n, I find this mighty troublesome?" Scotty was saying somewhere close.

Jim blinked.

"Not that I don't love the Lady, but me place is in Engineering and not up in that puffed-up chair of yours. You and Mr Spock shoulda plan these things better so I don't end up wasting my time watching paint dry."

Jim blinked again. Nothing hurt, so he tentatively pushed himself up.

"Ah, finally!" Scotty pressed a sandwich into Jim's hand. "And on that note, _ex_cuse me. Doctor, the lad's all yours."

Jim thought a few very offensive words in Scotty's direction, but refrained from saying anything out loud, because Bones was towering in the doorway and wielding a hypo, and Jim for once knew how he had ended up on the torture device Medical called a bed.

"You sedated me." Jim had wanted Bones to give him something that would relax him, make him chill out – not drop him down.

Bones prodded Jim's chest with one painfully bony finger. "Don't even start with me, cretin! If you can't keep it together without your menace of a life partner, I'll recommend you for medical discharge stat. I'm not kidding, Jim, I don't fucking have the wherewithal to dog your steps and sedate you every time you go into a rage black-out and try to murder a subordinate."

And then, Jim remembered the full minutiae of the circumstances that landed him in his current position in all their magnificent hideousness. "Alright," he admitted. "Killing him first and asking questions later wasn't exactly a logical strategy."

"Fuck you very much," Bones replied with artificial congeniality.

"You should have said before I got bonded, hubby," Jim retorted sourly, and then tamped down on everything he was feeling and became a Captain again. "I assume there is no probable cause to suspect Sanchez?"

"Nothing," Bones confirmed.

"Actually," M'Benga interrupted, walking into the room, with a dark-haired boy in cadet reds on his heels, "he's more interested in the conservation of Vulcans."

The look on Jim's face must have been a thing of awe, because the cadet added: "Not conservation like Vulcans in tin cans, but like saving an endangered species. And I'm not him!"

Come on, Jim had just been sedated. He wasn't exactly firing on all cylinders yet, and the last thing he had thought of before Bones had stuck him with the hypo had been… yeah, the perfect segue to the tin cans.

Jim climbed out of the biobed, found that he was woozy but able to keep his equilibrium, and decided that it was as good a time as any to restore order on his ship. Starting with the nearest point of contention. "Cadet Brent?"

"Sir!" the boy returned, snapping a salute.

"With me." Jim looked at the two doctors, who were silently conferring through the medium of anxious body language. "I'll give him back, Bones. Send me Sanchez in twenty…" He checked his chrono. Had he been out that long? Damn it. And there was still no change with Spock. Anyway, Beta shift would start in an hour, and there was no point in him going to the Bridge when Bones had already 'made his excuses' for him and mobilized Scotty.

"I'll bring him by," Bones replied significantly.

Jim took note of the censure and accepted it. He had a slew of reasons for not behaving rationally, but none of that would fly in front of anyone in position of authority over him. It didn't even fly in front of his conscience. His bond-mate might have been assaulted and then nearly killed in the same day, Jim might have been on edge and exhausted, but that was hardly an unprecedented occurrence, and it would undoubtedly happen again.

If he couldn't keep it together, he had no business captaining a starship.

x

Five minutes into the interrogation Cadet Clifford Brent dropped the name Doctor Marina Cantrell, and then things became strange.

Jim had Bones bring Sanchez and unceremoniously kicked his friend out of the Ready Room, despite grave threats of vaccinations and Bones' not negligible physical strength. Jim hated the look on the man's face as the door slid shut and the lock engaged. He was used to being stared at with contempt, but from Bones it felt like a punch to the soft tissue. It took a moment before Jim was able to take a breath.

He sat back down into his chair, indolently leant his head back and looked at the two cadets down the length of his nose.

"Captain," Sanchez hissed through his teeth, pale as chalk.

Looked like Bones had been coaching him along the way. Never mind. Jim wasn't going to kill him (not unless he had, after all, harmed Spock, in which case all bets were off, as several planets and species had already found out to their detriment).

"At ease, Cadet," Jim replied.

It had zero effect on the boy's posture.

"Tell me about your contact with Doctor Cantrell," Jim ordered.

Sanchez' teeth improbably clenched even harder. He pulled himself as tall as he could and failed to stop glaring. "I had had the opportunity to study her work in my courses at the Academy, sir. I was expressing my admiration of it."

Jim suppressed a snort. It wasn't even a lie, just a statement stripped of all relevant information.

"You and several of your friends," Jim amended.

Sanchez transferred his glare to Brent and clammed up.

"H-her work is very valuable," Brent stammered. He shrank under the scrutiny, but remained standing where he was and looking Jim in the eye. He might have been silently begging through that look, but it was still commendable compared to drilling a hole with his gaze into the wall behind Jim like Sanchez was doing.

"I have currently twenty-one… well, _nineteen_ cadets assigned to my ship. How many of them are pro-Vulcan extremists?"

The two young men remained silent – one sweating, the other gritting his teeth, and both quivering. Yeah, right. Hardened terrorists. Whose brilliant idea was it to make these two into _de iure_ criminals?

Compared to them, Chester and Blonsky were rough, tough gang-bangers with self-inflicted scarifications and a vocabulary that would give Orion pirates a pause. Figuratively speaking, of course.

Jim shook his head, feeling weary despite the shift-long Bones-enforced nap he had taken. "If I wanted to receive a complete and honest account of this… ah, _clusterfuck_, which one of you nineteen should I talk to?"

Sanchez, predictably, remained fascinated by the wall, up until Brent breathed out: "Katya." Sanchez pivoted and punched.

Brent sank to the floor, clutching at his nose.

"Enough!" Jim shouted, leaping to his feet, grabbing the arm with the balled-up fist at its end and twisting it behind Sanchez' back. "I still have free bunks in the brig. You will sit down, you will not move unless ordered to, and you will answer my questions! That goes for the both of you! Understood?!"

And, good God, Jim was regressing. He should have had better control of the situation – he wasn't a goddamn RA. He was the sodding Captain on this ship. Why didn't he have a security team on stand-by again?

Because he was an idiot. Right.

He managed to intimidate Brent and Sanchez into sitting their rear ends down and remaining (respectively) glumly and seethingly silent. Then he commed Cupcake, requested two guards as immediate back-up and Lieutenant Nored to pick up Cadet Pugacheva.

The Ready Room became a bit cramped with two ensigns taking up strategic positions – one by the door, the other next to the replicator – and that was nothing compared to how claustrophobic it began to feel when Lieutenant Nored arrived, preceded by a rake-thin girl of discernible Jewish descent. Jim watched the Cadet cross the floor and stand next to Sanchez, stringy black hair curling half-heartedly in the confines of her ponytail, and an uncomfortably familiar hundred yard stare in her dark eyes.

Despite himself, Jim immediately liked her. It was akin to kinship between two wounded predators; they were likely to tear at one another, but they understood well where the other one was coming from.

She couldn't have been more than twenty, for fuck's sake.

"Keptin," another voice said.

Jim blinked, but the hallucination of Chekov didn't disappear, so he had to conclude that his Navigator really was present. He held out hope that Chekov had come to update him on his investigation into the mysterious rescue of Spock, but that was dashed when the young man took place next to Pugacheva, picking a side as ostensibly as it was possible to do.

"Ensign," Jim replied tonelessly.

Pugacheva clasped Chekov's shoulder for an instance, and then stood at parade rest.

Jim leaned forwards and met the girl's stare. "Cadet, tell me about the Vulcan Conservation Effort."

x

"Let me get this straight. In your first year at the Starfleet Academy, you witnessed the consequences of the destruction of Vulcan and formed a… science club that evolved into a terrorist group."

"It is politics," Chekov spoke coldly from the side of the room, where he was curled up in an armchair like a particularly gangly, somewhat insectoid cat.

Jim wanted to start in on him for his participation in this disaster. He would have, in the past. He felt betrayed – because Chekov should have known better, should have brought it to Jim's attention long before Jim had stumbled upon it. They used to be like a family. Jim had started calling him 'Pasha' when they were off duty and treated him like a little brother, or a cousin.

The realization that the easy rapport that had once existed between them was lost shocked him. Hurt him.

Jim had lost something here in growing into his position on the Enterprise and becoming the kind of leader his crew needed – and deserved. He seemed to have been robbed of their affection. Well, there went his second family, following the first one into the abyss of history.

"The VCE started out legitimate," said Cadet Pugacheva, automatically taking the lead.

The way Chekov's eyes lingered on her when she stood up to Jim – her back straight, shoulders taut and an argumentative expression on her face – explained a lot.

Jim nodded to indicate that he would take her word for it for the time being. It even sounded like the kind of movement he might have gotten behind himself, while he had been younger and full of exuberance.

"We were gathering funds, doing advertising campaigns, that sort of thing. Then we tried spearheading information-gathering efforts, and that didn't go so well."

"Let me guess," Jim said dryly, "Vulcans are obnoxiously reticent."

"No – well, yes, that, too." The girl balled her fists and then opened them, releasing some tension at the same time. It was a neat trick. "But it wasn't going so good on the Federation front of things, either. Captain, the original proposal for a new Vulcan colony was on Clytemnestra Chalcedoni, and the High Command was seriously trying to bully it through the committee."

Jim pursed his lips. Going by the confused naming conventions, he could have guessed the coordinates of the system, but something didn't sit right with him. He tilted his head at Chekov.

"Practically on the edge of the Neutral Zone, Keptin," the boy explained.

The fuck? No, seriously? Even if someone was trying to finish what Nero had started, this was no way to do it. And Ambassador Spock would have had the fucker assassinated if it had gotten anywhere.

Such clumsiness warranted an automatic death sentence.

"Okay, so you did what?"

"Awareness campaign," Pugacheva bit off exasperatedly, as if that was self-evident.

"We went to the media," Brent filled in. "Aired a few disaster scenarios, started a bit of a shit-storm and got the original proposal rescinded."

Kudos to the kids, Jim thought. Also, that explained why they had moved from a sanctioned extracurricular activity to forming a preppy gang. It was one thing to cross the plans of some shithead on the Command when one had the power and resources of the Vulcan High Council behind them, a whole other bowl of plomeek when it was just a bunch of snot-nosed children.

Jim slid lower in the chair, pulled his feet closer and sank into the kind of sprawl that was a murder on his spine, and which usually irritated the people around him. "And then?"

Pugacheva let out an angry huff. She folded onto herself, and Chekov extended a hand to catch her wrist in silent support.

"We got disbanded on trumped-up pretext," Sanchez snapped, crossing his arms – a very picture of hostility. "They said we hacked into some private files. It's all bullshit, but it's in our records. Collective responsibility, too. Didn't even have the balls to give us a mock hearing."

Jim nodded, unperturbed by the oppositional young man. That could have been him. Hell, that had been him (fascination with dead bodies aside). "And they knew who you were, because you originally had an Eyeseen page set up. Membership lists."

"They pulled the page down," Pugacheva continued, "so we set up one outside the Starfleet system, going Eyeseen-wide. We were hacked within hours."

And then they got mad. Jim knew how this worked. He recognized the gleam in the girl's eyes – knew it from the mirror. It was uplifting to find out that there were other people in the universe who understood the drive to kick up shit until the whole waste dump caught fire. Good to know that once Jim was finished kicking, the new generation would take over. "So you went underground. Old-school. But a bunch of you were already tagged and monitored – private comms, residences, accounts, the whole shebang. You're lucky you didn't get into 'accidents'."

"We were smart enough to contact the other side," Sanchez pointed out, anger slightly bridled with smugness. "Turns out knowing that the Vulcan High Council keeps tabs on us, too, stopped unfortunate things happening to us."

Jim was beginning to understand why Scotty wanted to pet his cadet sometimes. Jim had no right to them, and he still felt stirrings of pride as they recounted their story. He was glad Bones had stopped him from murdering any of them… with the possible exception of Blonsky and Chester. That was a topic that would have to wait for a while, but he would get around to it. He still had almost seven hours till the start of Gamma.

"You keep records?"

Pugacheva twisted her bony wrist out of Chekov's hold and pulled down her sleeve, but not fast enough to hide that her forearm was adorned with a tattoo. "Not I personally."

Naturally. They had their hierarchy – their leader, her ex-oh, lieutenants, a treasurer, an archivist. Spies, too. Maybe someone specialized in wet work – although Jim wasn't sure what comprised wet work in this case (sticking roiling posters to Academy walls?). They had hackers, certainly, and – unless Jim had completely gone out of practice since his commission removed him from Academy politics – members of the faculty on their side.

Most likely the true leader was someone else, and used this girl as a sock puppet.

Never mind, though; it seemed that the core of the group was on the Enterprise, and Jim had already decided to make it his problem.

"Get me a full copy," Jim ordered. "If you try to censor it, I _will_ find out, and fill in the blanks with whatever my imagination comes up with. My brain is a pretty dark place, so I guarantee you that whatever I make up will be worse than the truth."

"Aye, aye, sir," Pugacheva replied, balancing on the edge between sarcasm and stoicism with flair own to her forefathers. She indicated the door in a bid to be dismissed; the security officer moved to bodily block the exit.

Jim raised his hand to halt her. "I have two more questions for the time being. First: Chester and Blonsky."

The three cadets exchanged looks between themselves. There was some shrugging and Sanchez curled his lip in disgust.

"We don't know, sir," Pugacheva said. "When we saw the roster of Cadets assigned to the Enterprise, we quickly realized that the core was made up of members of the original VCE – but it's not all current members, and not all of them are members."

"Which ones aren't?"

"Do you have a list, sir?" Brent asked. Lieutenant Nored handed him a PADD, which he set down onto Jim's table. He leant down to it, displayed the roster and tapped the correct names with his finger.

"Alright. Now, my second question." Jim stood and straightened to his full height, becoming the person that had once looked a grief-mad Vulcan in the face and accused him of not loving his mother. Even one of the security officers twitched away. The kids and Chekov acted like prey (including the girl, which disappointed Jim a bit). "What," he asked, "does Spock have to do with this?"

x

The Starfleet's system itself was running on the Interplanetary Communications Network, but Starfleet didn't own it, and they didn't control it, so they were considering it another battlefield. As a child, Jim had thought it was a playground – as the classic said: 'Eyeseen is for porn.'

Then there was that time of the Narada-related media frenzy, and he had changed his mind. There was nothing fun about watching Bones watch Jocelyn doing a reveal-all on the screen. Finding Bones unconscious and carrying him on his back to the hospital to have his stomach pumped had been distinctly un-fun, too.

People were shit, and Jim had learnt a long time ago not to fucking trust anyone.

Yeah, wasn't working out so well for him since he'd been commissioned.

"Now that," Jim said into his empty cabin bathed in the screen's dim blue light, "is what I call _cheating_." Then he laughed.

He had on board fourteen cadets that, he had learnt, made roughly a quarter of a crazy illegal initiative bent on saving the Vulcan race from behind the scenes. They had just the right combination of naivety and zest to want to blow straight through money concerns, politics and morality and eliminate the problem in the most efficient manner available – and likely one too sociopathic for even the Vulcans to accept.

They had good ideas and brilliant people. They had a research grant from the Vulcan Fund.

They had someone in the Vulcan Embassy who was letting them use the Embassy servers for a secure communications line.

Jim seriously suspected that this was the other Spock's pet project. It very well could have been. The old man was twisted like a corkscrew, underhanded in a way that let him run figurative circles around both Vulcans and humans, and so emotionally detached from this reality that he likely didn't really give a fuck about… pretty much anything. Maybe with the exception of his family – Sarek, Spock Zero and Jim himself.

Also, the old man was exactly the same as _Jim's_ Spock in that he had a strong yet selectively employed sense of justice and a thirst for vengeance that rivers of blood couldn't quench.

This is what you would have done, Jim caught himself thinking to his bond-mate, if you found out that someone had tried to put the colony on the edge of the Neutral Zone. You would have found a third party to be your eyes and mouth and hands, and you would have plotted a two-pronged attack on the enemy. And now that the colony is safely established, you are left with a three-dimensional board and all these pieces, so why wouldn't you go on playing?

Just for the fun of it?

Unless Jim was totally wrong – and he was rarely _totally_ wrong – these kids were Spock's kids. That made them, in a strange, cross-dimensional, cross-generational, metaphysical way Jim's kids.

Huh.

He pulled their complete documentations and started reading. If he was going to poach them, he should know who they were.

x

Jim redefined the term 'unorthodox Captain' as Starfleet understood it.

His crew accepted him and his unique style of command, and came to expect it of him. That meant that sometimes he gestured at Sulu to take the conn instead of doing the official language hopscotch; sometimes he gave orders via comm while hanging upside down in Engineering and trying to patch up fissures in cooling cylinders with gluesticks; sometimes he sat on the Bridge for sixty hours straight, marinating his guts in stimulants.

Occasionally that meant that he was too busy to even make an appearance on the Bridge.

Yeah, bad form for a Captain.

Ask Jim if he cared.

He didn't feel the slightest stirring of conscience as he took a seat by the terminal in the Botany lab with the weird allegedly sentient plant they were trying to communicate with – and which he had out-argued (and bribed, let him not forget the sex) Spock out of melding with, because, seriously, it was not scientific to every time take the same all-purpose shortcut.

He heard the sound of light footsteps.

"Captain," said a soft voice behind him.

Jim supposed that she was trying to not startle him. A superfluous effort, but he gave her points for thoughtfulness, on top of the points she had already won for quickly and decisively helping to save Spock's life. "Ensign Arlene Galway."

"I submitted a report," she said, pulling off dirt-stained gloves and depositing them on the edge of a huge ceramic flower pot that came up to her hip. "You have additional questions, sir?"

Jim twisted in the seat, leant his elbow against the terminal, and scrutinized the woman in front of him. She was tiny, mousy and somehow boyish, despite the uniform miniskirt; her hair was cropped short and she wore no make-up, which he privately thought made sense, because she worked in a lab with plants. He would have been surprised if plants cared about make-up. It wasn't out of the realm of possibility, because the universe truly was a many-splendored thing, but he commended the practicality.

"_Yeah_, actually," Jim replied, doing a dozen little things – from the awkward position on the seat he had assumed to a distracted smile to the pointedly askew command gold top he was wearing – to kill any slightest impression of office.

Galway bit her lip and tried to avoid his eyes.

Holy nacelles, good thing she hadn't gone into Command.

"So, how come you stopped the turbolift at the officers' deck?" he cut to the chase.

Galway's eyes were huge like, Jim imagined, the eyes of an orphan from a Dickens novel. Oliver Twist, or David Copperfield, or Philip Pirrip.

Jim shrugged. "I need to put something in the report."

The woman's expression darkened, and Jim knew he had struck pay dirt. Chekov hadn't figured out the mystery of the randomly stopping turbolift (and no, Jim didn't think Pavel had been too busy with his new, younger and more fashionable friends to devote adequate attention to his duties, because Pavel might have been an infatuated boy but he was also a professional). According to Starfleet database, neither Ensign Galway nor Yeoman Shanks, who had been at the scene, had any empathic or telepathic abilities to speak of.

Galway's hands shook. She blindly reached back to support herself by grabbing onto the ceramic basin of the flower pot. She dislodged the gloves, which fell to the floor and remained lying there, disregarded.

"I… Captain, please…"

"What happened, Arlene?" Jim asked, letting his voice sink to the low timbre he once upon a time used to lure people into his bed.

Galway seemed to be seconds away from bursting into tears. Her shoulders slumped as she gave up and started speaking: "We… Because the yellow alert was sounded. And it's policy to evacuate turbolifts immediately when an alert starts. So we stopped the lift, but when it opened we saw the Commander and… well, you know the rest."

Jim did. He had seen the camera footage.

No alert had been sounded. Or, perhaps it would have been more accurate to say that no alert had been sounded anywhere outside of that turbolift.

"Why didn't you put that into your report, Ensign?" Jim inquired, frowning. He wasn't sure what he would have done with that information, but it might have prevented him and his friends from vainly conducting several investigations toward dead ends.

A rebellious tear trickled down the Ensigns face, and she wiped it away with a mixture of shame and annoyance. "It was… it made no sense. Barty thought so, too. I… was not sure…"

"That your version of the events would be believed. So you lied on report," Jim concluded coldly. He stood, and barely refrained from rolling his eyes when the woman flinched away from him. "Well, in light of the fact that you have saved Commander Spock's life, I am not going to take any disciplinary measures, but this had better been the last time, Ensign. In space, incomplete reports cost lives. Lives, that inevitably end up on _my_ conscience, not _yours_, so you may rest easy either way, but for this to work I need to have confidence in my crew."

"I… I'm sorry… Captain… b-but… It was like he _called us_ to him… but that's not possible!"

Jim raised his brows. "I like to believe I have learnt not to underestimate Commander Spock."

While he had never seen it in action, and they had never discussed it, Jim was aware that Spock's file contained a footnote on his 'claimed but unexamined' capability of psychometry. Since Jim knew better than to doubt Spock's word in this context, it meant that Spock was capable of _melding with machines_. Maybe Bones wasn't that far off with his accusation of witchcraft.

Either way, Jim was going on the assumption that Spock had, as a last resort, melded with the Enterprise itself and called for help.

Spock would wake up soon enough and elucidate.

In the meantime, Jim wanted to know about the _kal-if-fee_ and what else Spock had 'implied' to him to get his way without outright lying. Cantrell had shed some light on the issue – what with being the first ever non-Vulcan allowed to make a study of the _pon farr_ – but Jim still couldn't reconcile the wreck Spock had been in throes of the blood fever with the level of manipulation necessary to dupe Jim into getting bonded.

x

"Why are you asking _me_?" Bones complained.

"You're my medical professional of choice?" Jim counter-questioned, taking inordinate pleasure from observing as Bones puffed up, deflated, colored and eventually returned to his semblance of equilibrium.

Trying to look busy, Bones rearranged a few PADDs, slipped the hypo he routinely threatened Jim with back into a drawer, then gave up, rested his elbows on his desk and his forehead against his fists.

Jim swung the visitor's chair back, reclining on two legs.

"M'Benga did his internship with them!" Bones complained.

Jim thought about Vulcan crumpling onto itself right in front of him, and – _surprise, surprise_ – failed to muster sympathy for his friend. "But you read Cantrell's paper." He was sure of this. Bones kept up to date with all sorts of medicine, primarily human, but also of all the species that served on the Enterprise. Spock, as a member of the Alpha Shift Bridge Crew and Jim's… well… _other significant other_, would have been a priority. Besides, the destruction of Vulcan felt personal to most of the Enterprise crew, Bones included.

Of course Bones had read Cantrell's paper.

"Yeah, right, fine. What's the problem now? Boils? Discoloration? Pain while you piss-"

Jim laughed. He knew he shouldn't have, but there it was: his morbid sense of humor in all its glory. "I haven't caught a Vulcan STD. Thanks a lot for the thought, though."

Bones cracked up a little, however much he tried to hide it.

"I actually want to talk about the _mental touchy-feelers_-" a term Bones had coined, "-and related stuff. And, before you protest, I know you're not an expert. I don't need a damned expert."

Bones gave him a flat look, but Jim knew what he had been doing when he had decided that his best friend and his doctor were to be the same guy.

"Let's start," Jim continued faux-blithely, "with the ultimatum itself. I am now older-" almost six months older, in fact, "-and wiser than I was when you put me on medical leave to shag Spock."

Bones cringed. It was hard to tell in the artificial light, but he might have gone a little green, too.

"I did that, and you did that, because he would have died otherwise. So said Spock. So says Cantrell. But from what I found, Vulcans have ways around the blood fever. Meditations. Drugs. Shock. Fighting. What I want to know is… was I duped?"

Bones sighed. His neck popped when he straightened and looked Jim in the eye. "No."

Jim let out a breath he hadn't consciously been holding onto.

"No, you weren't duped. The methods you've read about were _rarely_ implemented, but they were documented and they _mostly_ worked. On the planet. In the midst of a society – of clans and families, who, I am to understand, had empathic bonds to each other." Bones leaned back and set his feet up on the table, for once letting his blood flow freely downwards to his brain. "Cantrell is right, far as I can tell. Most of those who survived Vulcan are individuals with their bonds nullified or broken. They now have an enforced policy of forming new bonds, whether they want to or not."

Jim suddenly had an idea of why. Cantrell had never come out and stated as much, but he had a suspicion. "How many of those not-bonded survived the _plak tow_?"

"Zero," Bones replied, as Jim thought he would. He rubbed his temple and then caught Jim's eye again. "They're a nightmare. Their _biology_ itself's changed. I'm not kidding – their brains control so much of their body that the kind of emotional response they had to the destruction of their planet fucked up their nervous systems, immunity, hormone secretion… even their cardiovascular systems."

"So…" Jim thought to his First Officer, lying unconscious and _mint_-green in a hospital bed. "They're vulnerable."

"They're a miracle away from not being extinct, is what they are," Bones retorted gruffly. "Cantrell's doing a bloody good job, but maybe there's no perfect solution after all."

Jim didn't want the Vulcans to die out. He would have traded himself for them in a heartbeat… but that deal wasn't being offered, and he had enough responsibility to shoulder as it was. "Spock."

Bones raised the closest PADD and used it as an excuse for why he wasn't looking Jim in the eye anymore. "Would have died if he hadn't bonded, and he wouldn't have created the bond with anyone but you, I think."

Because Spock loved Jim. That was great, and at the same time an enormous inconvenience to pretty much everyone.

Bones exhaled loudly. "Now he's fine for the next… huh, six and half years, hopefully. Unless him being a hybrid has an effect on the frequency of the biological imperative. Or their hormonal cycles shorten, because if _I_ were a dying race, I'd _so_ crank up on the mating drive, and good God above or which direction is he in from this death-trap in the middle of nothing, how am I still sober…" He devolved into unintelligible grunting; a moment later he recovered and concluded: "Either way, as long as you're with him, he's hunky dory."

It might have been Jim's imagination, but it seemed to him like Bones was accusing him of something.

"I'm not planning to abandon him," Jim snapped, then took a deep breath and, more calmly, continued: "I can't promise I won't die, because I'm an effing Starfleet officer. But I won't leave him otherwise."

"Might not matter," Bones warned him. "They can shut down. Depression is a legitimate cause of death for their race. If they consciously decide so, they can just cut off all vital functions and expire."

Jim huffed. He turned away from the mental picture of Spock dying of his own volition, and shook his head. "There's not exactly much I can do about that when I'm dead."

Bones reflexively reached for the hypo in the drawer.

"I'm really trying, Bones," Jim implored. "I am."

Bones contemplated for a long while, and eventually he let out a heavy breath. "At least you can't knock him up."


	4. Chapter Three: Rum

A/N: Feedback would be very welcome. Enjoy.

x

Chapter Three: Rum

x

Jim's little one-on-one with Yeoman Bartholomew Shanks had gone pretty much like he had expected it would go – short and sweet, with the man radiating guilt and issuing an apology after every other sentence. He wasn't frightened by Jim – which was natural, given that this man was partially responsible for the administrative part of running the Medical, and as such used to working directly under Bones. After that sort of harrowing life experience, it would have taken a lot to scare him.

Shank's story matched Galway's just enough for Jim to conclude that they were telling the truth – not that he thought either of them had the skill to lie convincingly enough. They even sucked at lying in writing. In _official reports_-writing. That was some hard suckery.

Besides? How was lying on report not the first essential skill taught to every damn administrative officer in the 'fleet?

After he dispensed with his friendly-Captain/volatile-pissed-off-Captain schizophrenic routine, fairly sure that Shanks would not lie (badly) on report again, Jim found himself at a loss. He made a tour of the ship. The Bridge was boring; Gamma's XO was sitting on Jim's rightful throne and conversing in broken Orion with the Communications officer and one of the cadets – not Uhura's gossipy Bajoran, but an Orion boy with the blue stripes of a future Science officer on his red cadet uniform. They were mid-warp and absolutely nothing of note was happening, so Jim left them to it and moved on.

Engineering seemed lifeless in Scotty's absence, despite the yelling voices that could be heard from the workshops over the thrum of machinery. A peek in showed a handful of young people in protective overalls gathered around a mound of spare parts.

The VCE and their biggest, most audacious, most potentially destructive project, Jim realized with sinking stomach.

And there, in the middle of the group, was Breena Fitzpatrick, who regularly talked to Spock. Jim wanted to believe that Spock wouldn't have condoned what they were doing if he had known, much less help them, but if there was one topic guaranteed to upset Spock's equipoise and make him behave improvidently, it was the Great Vulcan Depression.

Fantastic – now Jim was being flippant about it. Genocide humor.

He left before they spotted him, meandered up and down the familiar corridors, squeezed through Jefferies' tubes for the Hell of it and eventually ended drawn, as if by gravity, back to where he started. He hacked into the lock on Bones' office, stole his holoprojector and holed up with it on the Observation Deck. He set it up in the middle of the floor and loaded a program he had written back in another life, when he had thought he would never hate anyone as much as he hated Frank, and when he had dreamed every night of getting out of Iowa.

As a kid Jim had read too much, watched too many travel logs and documentaries, and desperately wanted a _v'sta_ fox. He had asked for it for four subsequent birthdays and Christmases, before Frank's drinking habit got the better of him, before there was Tarsus and Jim had stopped believing in Christmases, and birthdays had become accomplishments rather than excuses for celebration. He had promised himself to get a _v'sta_ fox once he was adult and would have the room for a large pet.

Now there were no _v'sta_ foxes.

A little less bigotry, and it could have meant no Spock.

Who would Jim even be? Would he have lived this long?

It was not in his nature to succumb to depression, but the world he imagined, the one without Spock in it, suddenly seemed flat, colorless, cold. He almost felt icy fingers grip his upper arms before he shook off the cobwebs and focused on the present. What-ifs were bullshit – as Sam once liked to say.

Fuck Sam, too, wherever he was. _Whoever_ he was, since he had managed to loosen the noose of the Kirk name and slip out of it.

Jim's comm unit let out a doleful beep.

"Kirk, here," he said into it, since that was who he was and where he was. That kind of put things into perspective, and Jim figured out that not sleeping for sixty hours, with the exception of six hours of anesthetic-induced unconsciousness, was affecting his mental faculties. However unorthodox he might have been, he had never fallen down on the job, and he didn't intend to start. Maybe he should return Bones' holoprojector and grab a snooze before the start of his shift.

"In the immortal words of a black man," Uhura's voice said apolitically from the tiny little speaker, "_go the fuck to sleep_, Captain."

Had Jim been running himself ragged somewhat less, he might have cared about the fact that she sounded slurry and sleepy herself, or that she had obviously been conned by someone into giving the call – or that she was quoting Bones at Jim, good God, why did slavery ever get abolished? Bones and Uhura were supposed to be, like, natural enemies, not joining forces in their backhanded, passive-aggressive ways of mothering Jim.

"You may be fluent in seventeen languages, but you still don't do a convincing S. L. J., Lieutenant," he grumbled and, disenchanted, watched the hologram of the _v'sta_ fox pass through his hand. That was what his fantasies amounted to: moments stolen away from reality that primed him for the most slapstick falls back into his life, resulting in a rainbow of bruises. So to speak.

"Do you need company?" Uhura asked, and honest to God meant it, offering to spend the night with him, in the most platonic of ways, obviously, but nonetheless there. Like a friend.

"Thanks, Nyota," Jim said, and hoped that he didn't sound sarcastic. Sometimes he didn't mean to but still came through that way. "See you tomorrow."

"You better," she replied, unsubtle about the warning in her voice, "because the crew needs _both_ of you, but without _either_ of you we're practically flying blind."

Jim snorted. "Don't let the bed bugs bite."

He logged off before she had the chance to say anything. He thought it was a little bit funny (but, really, it wasn't funny at all, and Spock would have told him that 'he had the moral certainty of statistical and empirical proof of Jim's savant capability as Captain') that the crew, including his erstwhile classmates, the people he used to get drunk with, flirt with, sleep with, accept dares from and at the end of the day beat in classes through sheer, lazy genius really, honestly believed that Jim had the first clue about what he was doing.

He didn't, most of the time. He was flying just as blind as his crew, holding with one hand onto Spock, with the other onto Bones, and hoping against hope that love and justice and handsomeness would save the day. Every day.

He was handsome enough for it to work so far.

x

"I am an asshole," Jim said.

"Oh. Are we having another State the Obvious Day, Captain?" asked a nurse who was not Chapel, but might have conceivably been her genetically re-engineered clone.

Or her protégé. Chapel wasn't officially allowed to have one, but Jim knew that he and Chapel had corresponding opinions of authority and eerily similar responses to it, so it stood to reason that Chapel was growing a legion of her mini-mes, with different coloring for variety, somewhere in one of the more obscure laboratories.

"Captain? _Sir_?" the woman's insistent voice ripped Jim's nightmare into tatters of facts that, in the waking world, fit together with less abject horror and more cautious foreboding.

Chapel probably wasn't cloning herself, but she most definitely was coaching her gaggle of chiefly interchangeable subordinates in how to be evil behind angelic smiles.

"Seven?" Jim asked reasonably.

"In ten minutes, Captain," the nurse assured him, and giggled. Because she had had her eight hours of sleep, and was in for a run-of-the-mill, excitement-free eight-hour shift.

Jim thought that kind of life would have driven him to suicide.

"Thanks, nurse," he said dryly, and she laughed again, almost as if she knew how much that grated on him.

"I'll get you a coffee, sir. Just stay put for two minutes."

Jim considered that sage advice and decided to comply for as long as his attention span would hold onto the directive. In this current state, there was about a fifty-fifty chance that it would be the two requested minutes.

The nurse sashayed – and what was it about that uniform that made women _sashay_ instead of walking like normal people? – and Jim's eyes might have tracked the movements of her glutes while his mind was still stuck on the two-minutes order. When had the two minutes started again?

He checked his chrono.

It wasn't seven yet. Bones' shift was supposed to start at seven, but Jim knew his friend better than to think Bones wasn't hard at work already. That man couldn't take a break. Maybe Jim should just follow the nurse and sashay – uh, _walk_ straight into the den of the medical personnel. For all that the place somewhat scared him, and he was probably never going to see its darker and more illustrious parts (like Chapel's clone-growing lab), he was a frequent visitor.

Jim took a step forwards, but then the nurse appeared in the archway, carrying a generously sized cup of replicated coffee.

Ah. Two minutes. Jim remembered.

"Be careful, Captain," the woman warned him. "It's quite hot."

"Sure. Thanks," Jim replied, and downed a good third of it in quick, greedy gulps. He peripherally noticed that she was shaking her head at him, but that was one of the most benign reactions he had ever gotten from a nurse, so he counted it as win. The coffee wasn't that hot, either.

Oh, and there went Bones, conveniently appearing in sight without Jim having to construct an excuse to bump into him anywhere but in the vicinity of Spock's biobed.

Jim was already feeling more lucid, and remembered bits and pieces of the fairly vivid nightmares that had driven him to seek solace from his friend. And that made him determined to avoid Spock, because he was apparently a total asshole and spent his days in a workaholic daze interspersed with moments of frivolous recreational activities so he didn't have to freak out over Spock spending _his_ days in healing trance.

Bones dismissed the nurse and cast a judgmental look at Jim.

"What are you freaking out over now?" Bones grumbled, hitting the damn nail straight on its poor, abused head. Bones was clever like that.

"Not freaking out," Jim mumbled.

Bones' scowl deepened. He grabbed Jim by a golden sleeve and dragged him into his office, so harshly that some of the coffee sloshed out of the cup and left a trace of droplets on the grey carpet.

Jim was summarily shoved down into a chair and Bones started restlessly moving things around his table, maybe looking for something again, but most likely just to have something to do with his hands, with the added bonus of not having to look Jim in the eye. "Wonder what actually constitutes 'freaking out' in that weird-ass reality you live in," he grouched. "Panic attacks? Spree killing?"

Jim wasn't sure. He remembered Frank's fits from his early childhood, and later on Bones' drinking binges and that one Cadet that had jumped from the top of the administrative building in Jim's second year because she had failed her finals… oh, and Spock's reaction after the destruction of Vulcan had been pretty hysterical, too. Hysterical as in emotionally excessive, not as in funny – ha-ha.

Jim guessed that in the olden days of his unattachedness he had reacted to stress with fits of nymphomania. Maybe that was why he was so messed up right now. He was being hysterical, just in the Middle Ages' understanding of the disorder – he had the wandering womb and needed someone to get him pregnant-

Wait a second. Jim suspiciously sniffed the coffee, but couldn't tell if the nurse had laced it with anything hallucinogenic. He took another gulp, hoping that the caffeine would help clear his head. If he was poisoning himself with it, he would so write up that nurse.

Provided he could even identify her.

"Are you sick, Jim?" Bones inquired, rifling through a drawer.

"No," Jim replied honestly. He might have been poisoned, but then again, he might just have been really, really exhausted. Neither constituted a sickness.

Hopefully, there would be no encounters with Klingons today.

"Broken anything?" Bones asked pro forma, and didn't bother waiting for an answer, because they both knew all Jim's bones were intact, and he was in the hospital wing only by default. "Then get the Hell out of here."

"But Spock-"

"You're not here for _Spock_, Jim," Bones cut him off, for a change directing a cold blue gaze at Jim, like an icy blast. "If you were, you'd be sitting out there making a mushy face at his inert body and inducing nausea in everyone passing by. You're here begging me for attention."

But Jim couldn't exactly work off his anxiety the way he usually would – by getting into a bar fight or into a stranger's bed, or both – and his own hyperactivity was driving him crazy.

Bones turned away in his chair, glared at one empty wall, and laced his fingers together around his kneecap. "I discourage infidelity," he said, like he had read Jim's mind, because he _knew_ Jim, had seen Jim work his way through the stresses of exams and simulations and birthdays that coincided with deaths' anniversaries and, on two memorable occasions, video messages from Jim's mother.

On the other hand, Jim had seen Bones drink his way through the echoes of his divorce, and knew Bones' stance on infidelity better than his stance on autopsies.

"Go get Hendorff and the Cronies, and have a spar. Hendorff, at least, is smart enough to drag you here if you actually do break anything."

Bones had to be genuinely fed up with Jim if he condoned Jim doing damage to himself. That was pretty bad. Jim mentally recalled today's date and – no, no anniversary of anything worth mention. Bones was just feeling crabby. Maybe he'd woken up on the wrong side of the bed. Either way, Jim was going to take his bullshit out of his friend's presence.

He went. He paused by the door and briefly turned back.

He'd never have admitted it, but he suspected that he needed a goddamned hug. He and Bones, though, they weren't that kind of friends. It would be too awkward, and Jim wouldn't even know how to ask in the first place. It was always easier to get sex from strangers than any kind of prolonged physical contact from people he gave a damn about. And usually he was fine with that. About ninety-eight percent of the time.

Jim turned away again and left.

Listless and unwilling to go anywhere near his cabin – that was a place that used to be _his_, but was gradually phasing into something like _Spock's-and-Jim's_, and in Spock's glaring, loud absence felt more like a cell with bars made of banality and obligation – Jim re-started his grand tour of the ship anew. Only, by the time he got to the Bridge, it was Alpha shift again, so he just sat down and accepted the armful of PADDs that were waiting for him.

It was a good thing that Bones had no clue about how much Jim appreciated _some_ of his hypos on _some_ days.

x

The caffeine helped. Jim made sure that he had a steady supply of it over the course of the Alpha shift, which he spent playing a 'proper' Captain and sitting in the Captain's chair, skimming over reports that amounted to 'nothing out of ordinary happened' and listening to the hum of chatter going on around him.

He had received a few concerned looks, but his crew had built up a tolerance to him. They knew that when Jim behaved it was a sign of bad things happening, but this time they were aware of the causes and seemed to have collectively decided to cut Jim some slack.

Or maybe it was the impressive dark circles under his eyes.

Jim was so consumed by looking for supplemental reading on the research into the sentient plant that it took him a while to notice the commotion.

He looked up, blinking afterimages out of his eyes. The science officer on duty was glancing between his station and that of Communications. Jim turned, and found Uhura and her Bajoran Cadet subconsciously leaning closer to the console – as if that helped them hear better – and pressing hands to their headsets.

Uhura shook her head and said something in a low tone, in a language Jim couldn't identify, much less interpret. She spun to face the crew and gestured them to be silent.

The Cadet by her side closed her eyes and raised both her hands to press her fingertips to her temples.

Worried, Jim climbed to his feet (with all the limberness of someone four times his age), went over so he could whisper straight into Uhura's ear and asked: "Hey, Lieutenant… What's up with the girl?"

"Not now, Captain," Uhura shushed him. "We've caught a signal." She sent a slightly bemused look in the direction of the Cadet, and Jim filled in the blanks for himself. It wasn't Uhura that had found a signal. It easily could have been beginner's luck, but Uhura seemed to be doing some serious reevaluating, and Jim could tell when he was being superfluous.

He let them work.

Silence on the Bridge was nothing unusual, but Jim was attuned to the level of sound as a kind of shit-o-meter, so it was making him jittery. This was yellow-alert atmosphere, but there was no enemy in sight, and Uhura was treating this situation cautiously, but more like a scientific curiosity than like a legitimate threat.

"Ma'am," the Cadet said after a while of listening and occasionally glancing at the screens in front of her, "I think it's coming from the Enterprise."

"An illegal communications channel?" Uhura inquired, frowning and stepping closer to double-check the data.

Jim straightened. He had the core of a so-designated terrorist group on board, and he could imagine that they would have information to communicate to their true leader – chiefly the fact that they had been uncovered by Jim and were uncertain of how he was going to proceed where they were concerned.

He should schedule a meeting with them and soothe the wild beasts before they did something stupid out of desperation.

"I am unsure," the girl replied. "Some equipment emits waves on similar frequencies – it is possible we are hearing our own laboratories, only distorted as the sound is filtered through the ship itself."

Why then, Jim would have asked if the question wasn't so clearly implied, hadn't they been hearing that all along? It wasn't like they had any new experiments on board. Even the sentient plant had been there for weeks. There were algorithms that allowed Communications to disregard all signals from the ship emitted over the routine course of operation.

"Then let's locate the point of origin, Cadet Rum," Uhura ordered soberly.

Chekov joined them before she could gesture him to; he was not gifted in the languages department, but now they were going to do physics, and that he could help with.

Jim picked up another PADD: a preliminary plan for the implementation of security measures into the ship's computer's protocols, provided by Scotty, Chekov and Chapel.

Interesting reading. There were a few stumbling blocks they expected to face, challenges Jim expected to be overcome by the bright creative minds on Enterprise.

Another datapad held the sum of communication from the Admiralty. Interestingly, the highest priority was ascribed to the protests lodged against Jim's dismissal of Blonsky and Chester. There would be trouble coming from that side yet-

"Engineering," Chekov declared confidently.

Jim stood and clapped his hands. "Don't contact them." He didn't know if Scotty was building something illicit again, or if it was the VCE, but Jim felt like it was a time for a surprise inspection. "I'll see to it myself."

If Jim had been a little wiser or a little less impetuous, by 'himself' he would have meant 'himself and a security team he was going to bring along just in case.' He was, however, still loath to implicate the cadets in front of witnesses – if it, indeed, was the cadets. In case it was Scotty being Scotty, it was doubly important to keep the incident on the down low.

Jim entered the engineering and walked past the staff that stiffly pretended to be doing their jobs, with a kind of see-no-evil, hear-no-evil attitude that Scotty had trained into them (for, Jim suspected, the express purpose of being able to maintain the distillery). He let himself into the workshop where he had found the Cadets last time, and was proven both right and wrong in his suppositions – it was, in fact, Scotty _and_ the kids.

He briefly contemplated what his next action should be. He rarely felt like reaming out Scotty (notwithstanding that one time when the combined forces of Archer and Komack had come down on Jim for some frankly illegal upgrades done to the Enterprise, which Jim hadn't even known about, because Scotty had feloniously signed the commissions as acting Captain during one of the not-infrequent times when both Jim and Spock had been _indisposed_), but there were limits that had to be imposed. The kind of limits that would allow Jim and Scotty to keep this ship.

"Oh, again?" Scotty exclaimed, abandoning his study of the wiring blueprints (or whatever that technical drawing in his hands was) to the boy standing next to him. "Are we being haunted, Capt'n?"

"I don't know what you did last summer, Scotty, and, frankly, I don't want to," Jim replied. It probably had something with the Transwarp Theory, or boosting the output of M/AM reactors.

Scotty glanced at Jim as though he had been given cause to suspect the perpetually tenuous grip Jim kept on his sanity to have come loose, but eventually he disregarded the obscure pop culture reference like he disregarded everything else that was neither technological nor edible. In the end, Jim was still the guy who had effectively given the Enterprise to Scotty, and Scotty had yet to stop being palpably grateful.

"You have time for a little demonstration on this fine morning, Capt'n?" Scotty came closer. His accent thickened so much that Jim had trouble puzzling out the words as he added: "It ain't gonna work, so it ain't gonna take a lotta time."

"You already know it won't work?" Jim asked, trying to keep just as quiet. Scotty obviously didn't intend to alert the cadets, and Jim wasn't about to spoil it for him.

Scotty shrugged and scratched his ear. "The kids are sharp, but a little kick in the arse from the laws of physics ain't never harmed no one."

It was a wonder Scotty had managed to say this with a straight face, because his most infamous kick from the laws of physics had involved Archer's favorite dog being lost in the void and Scotty's kicked ass deposited on Delta Vega.

Although, even that had worked out for him in the end. Lucky bastard.

"Alright, then. I am all for education," Jim proclaimed with as much slightly-mocking haughtiness as he could muster within Scotty's presence. With a sense of responsibility he left out the addendum: 'especially when it constitutes an excuse for semi-public humiliation.'

"Mr Scott!" said the semi-familiar voice of Cadet Fitzpatrick. "Yea wanna do d'onours this time?"

"How 'bout yea ask the Cap'n 'ere, Breena?" Scotty countered and dug his knuckles into Jim's ribs to get him to move.

"Sir," the cadet inclined her head in a greeting that had never even heard of regulations, and Jim was a little ticked off. Admittedly, that was mostly because he disliked the young woman on principle.

"All non-essential personnel to the stations," ordered a young man standing next to the open viscera of the paneling. When Jim looked at him, he sharply saluted. "Connor O'Donnell, sir."

He was probably less than five years younger than Jim. That always put things into uncomfortable perspective.

Luckily, Jim was much too busy running a ship and didn't have time left over for contemplating existentialism.

"At ease, Cadet," Jim replied, looking over the students' work while the rest of the group gathered in the observation chamber.

The creation was an ugly monster made of circuitry. At a glance, Jim deemed it acceptable. They knew what they were doing – although Scotty commendably hadn't left them unsupervised – and they had played around with the usual template, making adjustments. Jim could point out the little differences between the original schematics and the end result, but he was satisfied with the work.

"Would you, Capt'n?" Cadet Fitzpatrick asked, gesturing toward the power button.

Her accent was far less pronounced now, but Jim would still bet diamonds against dimes that she barely spoke Standard, much less a slew of other languages – although he was peeved with himself for noticing as much. Ordinarily he would have been mentally taking her measurements instead.

Not that he wasn't doing that. Uh… the overall really did get in the way of 'casual observation'.

"What have you put inside?" Jim asked, touching the interface just above the indicated button.

"An orange," Cadet Breena said. "We thought we'd start simple."

Jim nodded, mentally readied himself to take cover in case the contraption would try to blow up on him, and pressed.

Nothing happened.

The two Cadets and Scotty stared at a mass of components that, after a closer observation, seemed to have come from inside a synthesizer casing.

"Now?" asked O'Donnell.

"Wait," Scotty and Breena replied at the same time.

Jim came to the conclusion that nothing was going to explode. Since he had already found the source of the disturbance he had come for, and since it looked like the Engineering cadets were going back to the whiteboard, he might have as well left. He typed a memo for Scotty to double-check the signals this group was generating and add any new frequencies to the ship's database to prevent any future scares.

"It's already past the maximum projected time," O'Donnell protested.

Scotty harrumphed, walked over and glared inside the machine. "No fruit 'ere."

Jim went on his way. He was disconcerted about the effort to create a copy machine, even at this stage. It was just an enhanced tricorder and a synthesizer cobbled together. Once it worked – if the kids ever got it to work – it would copy trinkets and foodstuffs… and maybe antique books. However, Jim knew human nature, and he saw the future of this invention. It would be used to _replicate_ people.

He was stunned that no one had ever created anything similar, since the technology had been available for a while. It was wrong, but then so were eugenics. Morality had never stopped humankind before. Earth itself had had two World Wars based on eugenics and, when it came down to it, the continued warfare between the Federation and the Klingon Empire was a lot about eugenics, too.

Cloning had been abolished for a reason.

Now, duplicating people theoretically bypassed the dilemma with the aging of cells, but it raised a whole host of other issues. Would it duplicate people with souls? Or without souls? Did souls exist at all?

Would they find out if they tried to _replicate_ people?

Jim had a love-hate relationship with religion. He wasn't big on rules, bigotry and mindless following, but space was rather impossible to survive without some kind of faith. He liked to believe he had a soul.

Spock claimed that he was actually aware of his. Although he called his a _katra_.

He claimed Jim was his _t'hy'la_, which amounted to a _katra_-mate.

If Spock was to be _replicated_, would they both have a _katra_? Would they share the same _katra_? Halve it between them? Would one just be an empty body? Would the body be self-aware? And now he was freaked out by a fantasy that by rights should have been _so_ hot.

Spock twins. What could be better?

Jim shivered and paused at the entrance to the Sickbay. Of course he had ended up here. His feet had carried him, no need for an input from his otherwise occupied brain, to the place that held his husband and his lover – his best friends.

He had so many questions about the nature of the soul (were there differences between humans' and Vulcans' souls – and those of other sentient species?), and he knew that the only way most of them could be answered was to make the experiment. Yet the experiment crossed lines that, Jim felt, he was duty-bound to protect.

That was the life he had chosen for himself. And that was why he should have been on the Bridge right now.

He could afford to stop for a little while before returning, though. Not for long. Just to re-anchor himself in reality. Spock had always possessed the unique ability to help Jim clear his thoughts.

Only, when Jim walked into the Sickbay, Spock was sitting up on his biobed and looking at him.

"Oh," Jim said dumbly.

Spock inclined his head. He didn't attempt to speak, merely gestured toward his throat.

Jim tacitly went to get him some water. He was familiar enough with the Sickbay to manage as much, although how he had done it without bumping into one of those interfering nurses, he wasn't sure.

He returned to Spock's side, ready to help him drink, but it turned out not to be necessary. Spock took the cup from Jim's hand and carefully sipped.

As he clearly wasn't needed, Jim took a step back.

That was when one of the nurses finally appeared – and, naturally, it was Chapel. She briefly hesitated at the threshold, taking several breaths to suppress the relief and elation that were momentarily stark on her face, and then came forward with an impeccable professional mask. "Good morning, Mr Spock. It is gratifying to see you awake."

"Indeed," Spock replied softly. His voice was a little hoarse from disuse, but the water had obviously helped.

Chapel nimbly took the cup away, alerted the physician on duty – Bones – and aimed a tricorder at the patient in the time-honored tradition of her ilk.

Spock submitted to the treatment stoically.

Jim realized he was pissed off. He was ready to start spitting and snarling, mad enough to seem completely insane to himself, and was on the verge of taking his leave to walk it off or something when Bones stalked in.

"Do you remember what happened?" he asked, taking the tricorder from Chapel's hand and pushing her off.

Spock, expressionless, admitted: "I had an adverse reaction to a draught."

"_You_," Bones pointed a finger at Spock's chest, nearly touching it, "are allergic to menthol."

"It's sort of universal irony," Jim heard himself say. He might have even smirked.

Spock apparently took that to mean that humor would be welcome, because he returned with: "Perhaps it was to be expected, given Doctor McCoy's… _vehement_ predilection for a particular alcoholic beverage." As if he hadn't recently nearly killed himself through dereliction of basic safety precautions.

"Yeah, Bones and mint juleps," Jim snarked. Any other reaction from him would be sheer hypocrisy. This was a taste of his own medicine. Now he got why Spock hated it when he was being flippant about his life. "But, Spock, you're taking the passive aggressive disapproval of Bones to truly lethal lengths. I think I speak for everyone on the Enterprise when I ask you to refrain in the future."

"Now, I hardly think Mr Spock did it on purpose," Chapel stood up for the poor, benighted First Officer.

"You don't ever defend me when they start in on me," Jim complained to her. Not that he would have wanted her to crush on him, too.

"It is a role-reversal," Chapel said, smiling more because Spock was fine than because the conversation amused her. She was ready with a PADD when Bones reached for it, though, and afterwards left to comm M'Benga, who was actually Spock's primary physician, and who definitely should have been here.

"Because you _do_ it on purpose, Jim," Bones concluded.

Jim inwardly flinched. He tried to keep on grinning, and in the way of all two-bit magicians gestured widely with his hands to divert attention away from his face. Bones had told him, repeatedly and drunkenly, that sometimes Jim turned down the shields on his eyes and they read like a horror story written in Cardassian Sunrises and motor oil and lighter fluid (Jim wasn't sure what Bones was trying to imply there, and the man claimed not to remember it in the hungover morning afterwards, but he had gone back to that exact same comparison for several subsequent binges).

Jim didn't – couldn't – deny that he routinely endangered his own life, out of duty, for love and justice, or just for kicks. However, a slew of absurd allergies weren't what he would have done to himself if he wanted to make himself interesting to a curmudgeonly medical professional.

"Bones, all this time between missions – you'd get bored in your man-cave in Medical if I didn't bring you out once in a while with a new and fun way to send myself into an anaphylactic shock."

Bones flinched outwardly, with his whole body, because he was a sincere person like that.

"Well," Jim said, "I've got a shift to get back to. I'll stop by later, Spock."

He was gone before anyone could raise the very logical protest that no one missed Jim on the Bridge, or expected him to return.

Perhaps he should start adhering to the rules a little more.

x

When he entered the Bridge, he led with: "Spock's awake," because he didn't want Uhura to eviscerate him.

There was a lot of shouting and clapping and laughing in response. Jim sat down into his chair and pretended that everything in life was perfect for once and the reason for the rapidly palpitating vein in his neck was sheer happiness rather than the urge to beat the crap out of something.

"Captain…" Uhura said. She looked like she was trying to split into two people.

Jim barely refrained from rolling his eyes. "Go, Lieutenant. You're dismissed. Your Cadet will take your post for the rest of the shift."

Uhura mouthed 'thanks' in his direction and ran off. When the turbolift door closed behind her, Jim turned to the Cadet.

She didn't seem at all perturbed to be left on her own. Then again, she was apparently the new generation Uhura, and Uhura didn't do self-consciousness.

"So, your name is Rum?" Jim inquired. That was a good name.

"My name is Malony, sir," she replied evenly, clasping her hands behind her back. "Rum is my clan."

Still a pretty cool name. It was better to concentrate on that than on his anger.

"I once knew a girl whom everyone called 'Gin'. And that's not really relevant right now, so how about you tell me how you've intercepted the signal, Rum?" He didn't really mean to accuse her of anything, but a little of his mood bubbled through.

She seemed startled at the undercurrent of hostility she felt from him, but weathered it well enough. "My auditory perception registers a greater range of frequencies than Lieutenant Uhura's, Captain, due to biological predisposition."

Rum Malony – a Bajoran Cadet. Jim thought he would have remembered that name, but he hadn't exactly been at his best over the course of the past few days. He didn't even have an excuse – he had watched Spock nearly die many times before, and never had he reacted with a breakdown. He had always kept it together.

If this would happen again, he might have to consider himself unfit as Captain.

Damn it.

He really should have known that it was too much good happening to him – a Captaincy of an awesome ship with a spectacular crew _and_ a harmonious, fulfilling personal relationship on top of it? Not on Jim Kirk's life.

This was going to boil down to a Sophie's choice; he could already see it coming.

He checked his personal PADD… and, no, Rum Malony was not on Brent's list of VCE members.

"Is it possible that the sound you heard was being produced by the main technical project of your fellow cadets?"

Malony's eyes widened. Her breath caught.

The rest of the Bridge crew staring at her probably wasn't helpful.

"I… I don't know, sir," she stammered. "I do not… know."

Jim nodded. She was trained exclusively for Communications – there was no reason for her to have advanced engineering knowledge. "Alright, Cadet. Tell me what you've learnt so far over the course of your posting. Do you think it's a worthwhile supplement to your education?"

Not that he was really interested, but he needed something to focus on. Rum was obviously pretty freaked out by Jim's rapid change of topic, so it took her a while to get started, but she quickly regained her confidence and jabbered on about her work with Uhura, the other cadets, and the gossip about them she managed to amass.

At least her hints on Chekov's relationship with Cadet Pugacheva distracted the Ensign from being too disconcerted by Jim's mood swings, so Jim only had to deal with Sulu's suspicious glances.

x

After dinner Jim ran out of excuses, fortified his defenses and on his way to his cabin stopped by Spock's.

The door opened for him. He stepped in, into the rooms that were almost as much his home as his own cabin. He could see his imprint on this space in the details – the unfinished 3D chess game moved to the top of the bookcase, the socks Spock wore on the nights they spent together, compromising on the room temperature, a holographic card game Jim had picked up on one of the Space Stations they had stopped at and then forgotten about – but he suddenly felt like he didn't belong here.

Maybe that was his injured pride speaking. Maybe it was the shapeless dread that something was due to go catastrophically wrong.

Spock regarded him from his station in an armchair, next to a device that Jim couldn't hope to identify, and which was a recent addition to his quarters.

"So… peppermint tea." Jim tried to make that sound as non-accusatory as possible, and found with distaste that he had resorted to stating the obvious as a hopeful yet avoidant conversation starter.

He could feel Spock's eyes on him, tracing his nervous cover of movement – the flitting and gesticulation and faux-ADD he presented whenever he wanted to appear dismissive and lackadaisical and definitely not emotionally invested. He was, as Bones had repeatedly informed him, easy to read once the reader had gotten their hands on the dictionary.

Spock could translate him like no one else.

Jim's fingers stroked the spines of Spock's books along the titles and authors' names. He had already read most of them. They smelled like safety and the promise of a better future.

"Jim?" Spock inquired. There was a tone in his voice (which mostly wasn't the case) and Jim tentatively interpreted it as 'taken aback'.

"Hm?" His thumb swiped over the decorative 'D' on the back of _A Tale Of Two Cities_.

"Have I given you cause to be weary of asking questions of me?" The 'taken aback' tone morphed into 'disquieted'.

Jim clenched his teeth and thought several colorful curses in several languages, two of which were dead. Not that he could speak those languages. It was the souvenir of that time during his adolescence before he had learnt to drown his anger in alcohol: he had striven to bitch out his life as creatively and as impossibly to argue against as he could.

And now he was an adult man, signed and sealed – married and bonded, heh – but the rage still lived on inside him. Spock fed off of it, sometimes, stole bits of it and used it to compromise his Vulcan-taught principles when he deemed it necessary. It was his crutch, and Jim offered it freely; after all, what was Jim's was Spock's, and vice versa – that didn't apply only to vintage books. Unfortunately, it was a double edged blade, and Spock inevitably cut himself on it whenever it touched him.

Jim thought about the question. Spock's display of vulnerability automatically activated Jim's defensiveness, and his instinctual response would have been the, admittedly truthful 'yes'. But that wasn't fair. And, sure, life wasn't fair, but people who didn't even try to treat others fairly were the ones who really made it worse than it had to be, and Jim so didn't want to be one of them. Not when he gave a damn. Especially not to the man with whom he had consented to spend the rest of his life.

"Such an innocuous thing," Jim said, returning to his previous topic and deliberately letting Spock's inquiry hang in the silence (which was an answer of itself). "I know that tea can be deadly," he grinned, and then grinned more widely when he saw how Spock's pupils widened in a Vulcan version of a flinch, "but you didn't know. This was an accident. And I don't understand it, and that frustrates me, because I think it would have been preventable – only I don't see how. So tell me, Spock. Please, explain this to me. Enlighten me as to how this happened. Didn't happen. _Almost_ happened."

Spock understood.

Jim wanted to touch him in that moment of realization, but they were the width of a cabin apart, and he was touching books, which was the next best thing.

Comfort. He, too, was a creature of habit. Perhaps he was getting old?

"Vulcan," Spock said quietly, forming the word with grief that would gradually transform into reverence in years to come, "carried many forms of life that were indigenous to it. Of its fauna, Vulcans themselves are the only species with a viable chance of continued survival."

Jim let out a heavy breath. He hung his head, eyes closed, and held onto the literature as if it was a buoy keeping him afloat. No _sehlats_ within fifteen years, he had read. No more _le-matyas_, no _v'sta_ foxes. Vulcans themselves were on the edge of the precipice of extinction, hanging on to their phylogenesis by the skin of their teeth.

"We have lost…" Spock paused, and then with his cutthroat rationality skimmed over most of what they had lost to his point, "the plant which we used as an herbal remedy to anxiety. The draught of _othuash_ helped us release physical, mental and emotional tension."

Finally, Jim was beginning to see where this was going. Spock was searching for a replacement for the _othuash_ plant among those available. Naturally, he started with those used by species with similar biological characteristics – to him, that meant humans – that contained similar toxic substances (because there were no two ways about it, Spock was looking for a drug). And peppermint was not poisonous to Vulcans, so why not try it?

Jim wanted to make a quip about experimenting without anyone present to keep an eye on the specimen, but that was something he could say to a colleague or a subordinate. Not to his lover, aside yet of the fact that this man was mourning his entire home planet, most of his family and nearly all cultural background.

"Then," Jim said, "I expect you have a whole storage of samples."

"Correct."

Spock would have been methodical about his experiments. Statistically, it was only a matter of time before he had an adverse reaction; Jim wished it had been a less dangerous one, but a near-death was par for the course for them, so he resolved not the dwell on it.

He viciously stomped on the query about why Spock hadn't told him.

Jim could be rational. Why would Spock have confided in him about an (intensely) personal project?

And the thought most certainly did not leave Jim feeling a little hollower inside. That would have been absurd.

"Please," Jim said formally, presenting the façade that Pike had trained – _beaten_ – into him during a long and intensive after-hours one-on-one course in 'diplomacy', "be careful in the future. Your well-being is important to the entire Enterprise."

Spock's pupils widened again.

Jim looked away. His gaze slid over the familiar relics of Spock's previous occupations to the newest installment in these quarters. It was a black box with a curved thin piece of metal sticking out of it. It was not aesthetically pleasing, and it did not seem like it served a scientific purpose – Jim liked to believe he would have been able to identify what it was, had that been the case.

Spock rose and took a step closer to the device. He touched the side of the box, presenting Jim with the sight of the back of his bent neck above the ascetic black robe. "My Mother commended expressions of art. It was for her sake that I took up music."

Talk about _non sequiturs_.

Music, huh. Spock had never made a secret of his appreciation of harmony, but he had never shown a propensity to _make_ music.

"That is not a lyre, though," Jim said trivially. Of course it was not a lyre. Any three-year old would have spotted the differences.

"Indeed, Captain." The following pause echoed with the unvoiced comment about Jim's observational skills and his penchant for stating the obvious. "Cadet Fitzpatrick from Commander Scott's team has manufactured it for me."

"Hm," Jim replied, eyeing the contraption out of the corner of his eye. Not that he suspected it would try to bite him, or that he minded that a leggy, brainy blonde like Fitzpatrick was giving thoughtful presents to Spock… well, Spock certainly sounded and looked fond, although whether he was feeling that toward Fitzpatrick or toward the black box with bits of metal sticking out of it was anyone's guess.

Jim liked it when Spock was happy.

It was just… after a lifetime of making people around him _unhappy_, he couldn't quite trust himself to not be a hindrance to Spock's happiness.

He wanted Bones here.

"It is a theremin," Spock informed him, noticing Jim's lack of reference.

Bones knew Jim well enough to pick up on when he needed a good shake, or a pat on the head, or a slap and a few choice words to get back on track. Spock saw a little less of this part of Jim, because the rank of Captain blocked some bits and pieces from his sight.

It was his own fault, Jim was aware; once he was bonded to Spock he should have opened up to him instead of just waiting for the next catastrophe that would require him to reveal more of the ugly person he was hiding behind the glam exterior. Unfortunately, his habit of twenty years was pretty damn unbreakable.

Spock unfolded his fingers and moved them as though he were stroking an imaginary sphere. The black box made a trilling sound.

Jim could imagine how the thingamajig converted prestidigitation into music, and then tried to think some more about Spock's fingers outside of the context, only he felt so melancholy that his mind refused to linger in the gutter and kept returning to the contemplation of more philosophical topics. From the taste of Spock's fingers on his tongue he went straight to the genocide of the species, and that was enough of a warning to promptly remove himself from sentient company.

"So, chess tomorrow?" he inquired, making an exaggerated grimace to cover any sign of a genuine expression.

Spock blinked at the rapid change of topic; nevertheless, he nodded and retracted his hand from the theremin, turning to face Jim. There was a vertical line between his eyebrows, and Jim's fingers itched to smooth it out, but he couldn't, because emotional transference through skin contact was pretty much inevitable and he knew Spock would be reading him.

Spock would be reading him through the bond, because Jim made it damn near impossible to be read in any conventional way.

He bounced on his toes, grinned, and pointed his index finger at Spock's sternum. "It's a date!"

Then he made himself scarce faster than his First Officer formulated a protest.


	5. Interlude: Bourbon

A/N: Thanks, catbob1. I hope this satisfies.

x

Interlude: Bourbon

x

In theory, a telepathic bond should have prevented a relationship from being damaged by insecurities. In practice, Jim managed to beat even those odds.

x

"I'm a doctor, Jim. A medical doctor. The kind of doctor that cuts up people and shoots them full of chemicals and writes their goddamn prescriptions."

Len was a galactic champion in grumbling. Never officially acknowledged, but he should have been. He declaimed some of the most colorful grumbles once he got going.

Jim, on the other hand, was a sulker. A brooder. A pouter.

Jim had been genetically predisposed toward pouting with the lips and the eyes and the woe-is-me spirit. Sadly, Jim's woe-is-me was more of an I-am-woe – as though his very existence was the blight on the shiny unmarred vista of lives of the people who gave a damn about him. Idiot.

"What I mean," Len continued when the kid failed to acknowledge him beyond some slight stiffening of his shoulders, much like a cat with its hackles raised, "is that despite the fact that I've got those degrees and technically it's one of my duties – like it's not enough that I'm the CMO, and the admirals' favourite piñata, and the shoulder to cry on for half the damn crew in addition to being your personal fucking medicine man…" Len blinked. He was sure he had been going somewhere with that.

Usually his grumbles didn't get away from him that fast, but he suddenly realized that Jim was looking up at him, no so much pouting as simply scared. Oh, he didn't look it. He never looked it… that was, unless people knew what to look for. And people didn't know, because they were stupid.

That was a fact of life.

People were stupid, and Jim was free to do his anemic impression of a blond incarnation of Snow White without getting caught out. Len just needed to see the lip reddened from Jim gnawing on it, the tightness around eyes that seemed at once bigger and paler than usual. This was what, in the world of James Tiberius Kirk, passed for 'stoic'.

Much worse than pouting.

"You were about to tell me that you were a doctor, not my therapist," Jim told him in a voice so devoid of humor that Len put one hand to the wall and folded himself into a sitting position on the floor right next to his friend without further ado.

"What did you make yourself believe you've done to the hobgoblin now?" Len asked, leaning back. The floor and the wall were cold, and he didn't have any alcohol on him, which was a crying pity. He definitely deserved alcohol in this situation.

Now Jim snorted. He closed his eyes and leaned to the side, just so that his zygomatic bone touched Len's shoulder.

Len raised his hand and ruffled that kid's hair like he used to do to his dogs. Child could never settle on one kind of animal to emulate. Too damn human, this one.

The whole species' collective saving grace, in Len's not so humble opinion. And he wasn't alone believing it, because the way the pointy-eared bastard looked at Jim, there was at least two of them who thought the world of not only the Captain, but also the lost boy from Iowa.

Len wriggled and with some difficulties untangled his PADD from his pocket.

"Whacha doing?" Jim inquired, lifting his head from Len's poor, abused shoulder and squinting in the meagre starlight.

The PADD screen lit up with blue glow and Len awkwardly, one-handedly typed.

"Hey, Bones! Bones-"

"You were prevaricating," Len protested. "Might as well get some work done while you scrounge together enough spine to open your pie-hole and _talk_."

Jim gave him an uncomprehending, open-mouthed stare – like he couldn't believe that Len was being an asshole. Len wasn't buying it for a second. Neither of them was _that_ new.

Jim puffed up his cheeks, and the pout practically screamed out the childish '_Mean_!' that he was thinking.

Yeah? He had asked for it.

Len finished his message and sent it, before redirecting his attention back to his friend. "So?"

Jim let his hands fall to the floor, knuckles impacting into paneling with muffled clanks, and craned his neck to look at the stars outside the darkened observation deck. "Breena's cute."

What?!

Len checked his chrono. Then he checked the PADD's internal calendar. No, he hadn't gotten lost in time. Jim did seem like the authentic Jim, but there was always the chance that he had crossed dimensions or realities or whatever, stepping out of the Sickbay into the peril-wrought corridors of this tin-wrapped death trap. Wouldn't have been the first time, either.

Some days Len wanted to lock the doors to the Sickbay and keep the danger outside. Of course, then Jim would have gotten himself killed and Len wouldn't have been able to do anything about it, because the Association of Physicians could count on Len's one hand just how many times Jim had willingly stepped into a hospital. Of those times, exactly none was because _he_ needed medical attention.

"And nice," Jim continued.

Len nodded, because you were supposed to agree with madmen. At least so he thought, and he had the degree that _a priori_ proved him right.

"And she's really smart, too. Plus, dimples."

Len really couldn't stop himself. "Who _are_ you talking about? And it better not be who I think, because I might seriously, cross my heart and hope to die, vomit."

Jim breathed out a mirthless cousin of a laugh and, with thousands of stars reflected in his pale, pained eyes, said: "Cadet Breena Fitzpatrick."

Okay. Len knew Cadet Fitzpatrick. He also knew a catty Jim, and a hurt Jim, and a Jim who hid his hurt behind cattiness, and that wasn't happening here. Way too much dejection. He felt sort of honored that Jim showed even that much of his feelings, but that had always been a landmine. Dealing with Jim was sometimes like trying to shave with a straight razor when both your hands were tied behind your back. It took a contortionist, and even then he was risking that he'd slit his throat or poke his eye out because he sneezed halfway through. Jim had been (metaphorically, praise the Lord!) gutted and strung by his intestines by clever and beautiful women before, but he knew how to drink and laugh and fuck it off, and how to move on from there.

That meant Len would have to breach one of his least favorite topics, and this was coming from a man forced into deep space, used to wade through vomit and blood so he could end his day diagnosing some cretin's genital warts.

He swallowed bile, ensured that his teeth weren't making that distinct grinding sound by keeping them locked together, and asked: "Spock?"

Jim glanced at him, making the 'wasn't this what we've been talking about the whole time?' face.

Right then. Sometimes Len had to ask himself how anyone could understand this mysterious creature, and then he figured that it had to be easier when one was a telepath. It had to. But, obviously, _easier_ didn't mean _easy_. And, no matter how much he disliked the green fairy in their lives, he had to sympathize. Jim was Hell on legs. He was an avatar of chaos, and he came without safety-fuses.

"Right," Len repeated aloud. He would have to guess. Jim would correct him, and that would get him talking, or at least eloquently grunting if he was feeling especially defensive, so Len deliberately guessed wrong "Spock thinks Breena's cute?"

Jim's face went through several expressions, until it tentatively settled on straight. "No. Or maybe. I don't think Spock has a concept of 'cute' as such. Maybe Vulcans think 'cute' is an emotion? Or that 'finding something cute' is an emotion?"

Len nodded. Luckily, there was no need to provide more encouragement.

"I think Breena's… attractive. She is! Bones, my ship's got one damn attractive crew, doesn't it? It's only right, to have a crew that matches the Captain. Now, just think that we were all picked for our brains and our sheer awesome. We've got it all."

"Except we don't," Len counteracted harshly, with cynical lightness that took the wind from Jim's bullshit sails.

The kid deflated.

"Just tell me what the woman's got to do with anything," Len ordered. He'd have been afraid that his friend was falling in love with the wrong person, except that his friend already had fallen in love with the wrong person, and they were dealing with it as well as could be expected. It was a disaster, of course, but at least it was being mitigated.

Jim mulishly turned to look at the twinkling stars again, easily as closed off as if he had crossed his arms in front of his chest.

Len tried to resist for a moment, but then he gave in and rolled his eyes. "I've got hypos. And I won't hesitate to use them."

"You never hesitate to use them," Jim grumbled. He pulled up his knees and into the black fabric of his uniform trousers proclaimed: "I want him to be happy."

Len slowly unfolded himself and climbed to his feet. He wanted to help Jim, he really did. But there was no way in the damn space he was doing this sober. No goddamn way.

x

It took two inches of Len's bourbon and half a bottle of Chekov's stomach-lining-stripper before Len had Jim where he wanted him, and Jim had reached the stage when he didn't mind where he was because he had compartmentalized the consequences of the words coming out of his mouth into a cell inside his mind locked with chains and guarded by burly Russians whose grandfather used to be mafia and whose grandmother had probably distilled the moonshine in the first place.

Len was feeling the bourbon keenly. Yet more keenly he was feeling that dinner he had missed today.

The whole sordid story came out in fits and starts in between Jim falling silent and hiding inside himself, and soliloquies on various peripherally related subjects (like the mortality rates of Vulcans post the Death of Vulcan, the qualifications compulsory for engineering staff as opposed to what Scotty actually expected of his engineers, the parallels of evolutions of musical instruments on Earth and on Vulcan and, by far most startlingly, the tale of how Jim survived being chased by a Hengrauggi).

Len coughed out a mouthful of bourbon.

His throat burned.

"Bones?" Jim inquired, worried. He tried to climb out from the corner hidey-hole between the wall and the metal cabinet where Len usually kept the holoprojector, but he didn't have the necessary coordination. If he had tried to hit Len's back to help him breathe, someone might have been tragically killed in the process.

And Len really should have known better by now than to indulge inside his office.

Except… yeah. That's where most of the alcohol was. Safely locked up with the rest of the drugs.

"I'm gonna die of an ulcer one day. Just drop dead in the middle of a shift, I swear. It's gonna be all your fault." The tears in Len's eyes were there because he had just finished hacking his lungs out, no other reason.

That he wanted to drop to his knees and smother Jim against his chest just to feel him breathe was neither here nor there.

"Wasn't that bad, honest," the stupid kid replied plaintively, eyes roving over the monochromatic walls that Len had once thought would drive him crazy. How innocent he had been. Monochromatic was nice, after any significant measure of time spent among the freaks that surrounded him.

Len wanted to hit Jim.

Except the idiot had been hit too much, and now he was obviously brain-damaged, and even that hadn't helped him learn his lessons.

"Was just a bit of crazy running around in the snow and on ice and – yeah, the avalanche wasn't even that bad. And, I mean, I don't remember a whole lot. I was sorta high on the adrenaline, Bones, it was just a lot of 'huh, cold' then 'oh shit' and then 'run-run-run' and then it was safe and warm." Jim paused. He looked straight at Len, but his pupils were dilated, so it seemed more like he was looking _through_ Len. "It was _safe_ and _warm_, Bones."

Len felt a cold hand clutch his heart. He could but guess what those two words actually meant to Jim, and the fact that to Jim the concept seemed so… so awe-inspiring implied a lot that was just unconscionable. Some days Len almost hated humankind. He probably would have, were it not for Jim.

"Safe and warm," the drunk Iowa boy repeated for the third time, "and Spock."

Len, despite himself, accepted that.

He knew that he had had a lot to do with shaping Jim the bored, apathetic criminal into Jim the young disaffected hero with a blinding smile and a crew that would follow him to the end of the universe and beyond. He had no doubts about how fiercely Jim cared for him, either.

He had the marriage license to prove it, too.

Suddenly Jim slammed his palm against the wall. "I hate him so much!"

Len choked and started coughing anew.

"Okay, no, of course I don't hate him. I-" instead of finishing, the boy took another gulp of his alcohol, and Len was so, so glad for the moment of discretion. "I'm just so fucking mad at him." He sniffed.

"Good God, Jim…" Len rolled his eyes so hard it gave him a mild headache. "Now you see why you're the cause for my chronic high blood pressure? Because while you're lying there like you might not make it, I'm scared. But when you heal, I stop being scared and-"

"Get mad instead," Jim filled in oh-so-cleverly, as only a person more than three times over the limit could.

"Yeah," Len agreed. "That's normal, kid. Your goblin deserves a good smack for this stunt."

"I'm not going to _hit_ him."

It wasn't funny, but Jim looked so genuinely appalled that Len had to laugh. And God. God, he was laughing at Jim's trauma, because naturally the kid never talked about it, but Len knew what to look for, and once you were beaten on by someone you were supposed to be able to rely on, the idea of domestic abuse is never ever fucking funny.

He was still laughing.

Fucking bourbon.

x

Len missed the dawn. Back on Earth, the sky getting brighter was a sign that he should probably stop drinking and try to find the way home. Or, at least, to the dorms.

Here, in the middle of the hugest nothing that anyone could never imagine, there was no dawn.

And he was wasted.

So was Jim.

"Bones… Hey, Bones, if you could just, just syn-the-size a human body – like steak, or ham-and-eggs – just program it'n and push a button-"

"Jesus, Jim."

"So you wouldn't?" Jim sat up against the wall, practically hugging it. "Even if it, like, had no soul? Think about it! Hundred percent compatible spare organs. It would re-vo-lu-tionize medicine!"

"Look. Look… I know I don't do enough to disc'rage you from talking ex'tenshalism when we're wasted, but stop now. I mean it, Jim."

"But, it's bad. Right? It's not… it's…"

Len tried to think of something constructive to say and came up blank. The idea of cloning people and keeping the 'other' specimen insensate to harvest it for organs had existed for centuries. The obvious, wrenching amorality of it had prevented it from ever becoming a wide-spread practice. What Jim was suggesting… Len could see the… the _logic_ of it. And yes, thinking that did make him die a little on the inside.

"Where'd that come from?" he asked instead. It was crazy enough to be Jim's idea, but something must have inspired him to go down that particular garden path.

"They're building it." Jim tried to deposit his half-empty snifter on the floor, misjudged the angle, and ignored it when it tipped over. "Bones, this could save the Vulcans… but I've got to stop it."


	6. Chapter Four: Coffee

Chapter Four: Coffee

x

Jim woke up to the familiar feeling of being phenomenally hung-over.

Chopin was playing in the background, since Jim had apparently gone to sleep in a heartsore mood and never gotten around to instructing the computer to turn the music off.

By memory he reached for a hypo that Bones had pretended to let him steal and, with a painful grimace, jabbed himself into the neck. Bones had in fact made it a practice to leave a hypo for Jim to take in an easily accessible place and pretend that he didn't. He was wily and liked to have the moral high ground for scowling in disapproval, but he would rather enable Jim than watch him suffer, not because he was secretly a marshmallow (which he really, really wasn't… unless little kids were involved…), but because he had internalized the Hippocratic Oath to the point that he might have been legitimately suffering from a disorder. An occupational disease. Some sort of whacked out, one of a kind, healer mania.

Jim closed his eyes and listened to Chopin. The thundering echo of the tones inside his skull gradually subsided, and he eventually convinced himself to climb out of bed and stumble over to the bathroom.

He wasn't even that nauseated. Bones was a demigod of medicine, no kidding.

x

He found Bones sitting in the midst of a gaggle of young women, most but not all of whom were nurses and medical technicians. Jim's friend was making his usual grumpy face at the world, which at the moment consisted of the mess hall with the foot traffic – _food_ traffic – picking up in anticipation of the start of the Alpha shift.

"Morning, Captain," one of the nurses said, and eagerly gestured at a nonexistent empty space at their table.

Through a series of actions that Jim suspected broke the laws of physics, the other girls wriggled and shifted – and quite possibly defragmented – and generated a sufficient amount of room for Jim's butt.

There was no way he could have said no to that, even though he suspected that the hand Bones kept under the tabletop was clutching onto a tricorder and twitching to be extended in Jim's direction.

Bones' scowl deepened, though there was not a hint of last night's indulgence showing.

Yes, well, they couldn't all be high-functioning alcoholics.

"Hey, Bones. Ladies." Then Jim had a brilliant idea on how to keep them all distracted, get Bones off his back by getting him on someone else's back, and delegate research, all in eight words: "Ever heard of a plant called the _othuash_?"

There was a cacophony of negative responses while Bones concentrated yet harder on deepening the lines on his face. Eventually even he was forced to admit defeat.

"Doesn't ring a bell," he grumbled around a mouthful of synthesized breadstick. "I'd have to check the database."

One of the technicians, a little blonde with nose that must have been very badly broken in her childhood and treated even worse, pulled out a PADD – one of the issues customized for work in laboratories. It had a larger display than the usual personal datapads.

She pushed it over to Jim so he could guess at the spelling.

Oddly, he didn't _have to_ guess. Only after he saw what he had put into the search engine, he realized he had written the name in Golic.

It made sense, but he didn't want to think about it at the moment. Touching an icon, he instructed the computer to translate all found entries into Standard.

"Do," he said to Bones, and slid the datapad over to its owner, who very nearly hugged it to her chest before she realized that her friends were staring at her – whereupon she reluctantly relinquished the device to the CMO.

Bones grimaced and tapped his finger against his lower lip in contemplation while he scanned the plant's properties. He was savvy enough to not comment on the fact that they were very obviously talking about a Vulcan-indigenous organism, and that parts of the file remained un-translated because the Universal Translator couldn't hack academic Golic all that well. Perhaps another project to work on in the future, should Jim unexpectedly find himself in possession of a bored Vulcan.

He didn't anticipate that would ever be the case.

"Quarter to," an Ensign said grumpily – except on her pretty face it seemed cute rather than curmudgeonly.

"Oh, fine," her fellow grumbled back and started to rise. She lost her balance and put a hand on Jim's shoulder to catch herself.

It probably wasn't even intentional, since she seemed really embarrassed, and hurried away to hide her red cheeks behind a hermetically sealed lab door.

"We ought to go, too," a nurse pointed out.

"The Boss doesn't tolerate tardiness," her red-head colleague cheeked Bones, who for all intents and purposes was completely absorbed in the reading and thus didn't perceive the outside world.

"I'll have your PADD back to you within the hour, Crewman," Jim promised the one with the broken nose when she hesitated before leaving.

"Gingers," complained Bones, who was rarely as blind and deaf to his surroundings as he pretended to be. "Next time you or your hobgoblin are in, I'll have her on primary care. She'll learn what it means to be contrary." He cast a _pro forma_ glare in Jim's direction.

Admittedly, to Bones, assigning someone to take care of Jim was the worst punishment imaginable that didn't actually go explicitly against Starfleet regulation. What the marriage license said about him then was a legitimate cause for a raised eyebrow. Unfortunately, Jim still couldn't raise just the one. He was working on it, only it wasn't exactly something he could train while sitting on the Bridge.

Not unless he actually wanted to invite ridicule.

"Captain," another voice cut into Jim's contemplation.

Bones jumped – this time he had genuinely blocked out the outside world – and twisted in his seat.

Lieutenant Hendorff was standing behind him, sporting a concerned expression and clutching a PADD. Cupcake and Jim were usually on first name basis, and since Jim didn't recall offending anyone lately, there was probably trouble ahead.

"Hey, grab a seat," he suggested.

Worryingly, Cupcake refused. "Captain, there are issues that require your attention. I have delayed raising the topic with you since – well…"

Since everyone on board and their pet teacup Chihuahua apparently knew that Jim had gone a little crazy – as he usually did when one of 'his' people was in danger, but worse, because there was no obvious enemy to expend his rage against. Even the guys from Security didn't want to go anywhere near him unless they absolutely had to.

Jim stood and after a brief contemplation grabbed an apple from Bones' tray. He was glared at, but Bones liked to see him eat – not to speak about eating healthily – too much to vocalize any protest.

"Go do your Captaining," the grump encouraged him and returned to the borrowed PADD.

Jim frankly doubted that its rightful owner would get it back when he promised, but he could spam Bones' comm unit just as easily as he could nag him from two feet of distance. He might as well walk off with Cupcake.

"Now," he said as they entered the corridor, Cupcake lagging a respectful half-step behind, "do we need to take this to the Ready Room?"

Hendorff knew him well enough to not be unbalanced by having to report along the way to the Bridge. He quietly sighed and admitted: "The gossip has already spread."

Jim wasn't really surprised that somehow it had missed him. And, judging by what Cupcake said next, lately the scuttlebutt was getting especially virulent.

"We've heard that Commander Spock has made a full recovery, and is back on duty."

"Against medical advice, no less," Jim replied with faked humor. On the other hand, the whole idea of spaceflight was against medical advice if Dr Leonard Horatio McCoy was the one doing the advising, so Jim was inclined not to take it too seriously. In his case. Not taking it seriously in Spock's case was, apparently, a bit of an internal struggle.

Standing inside the turbolift, Cupcake crossed his arms in front of his chest. There was a hint of embarrassment as he admitted: "…we're really glad."

With considerable effort Jim stopped himself from showing his surprise. Well, he knew that the crew universally adored Spock – in varying degrees of adoration, some quite unprofessional – but he hadn't actually expected the tough boys from Security to come out and profess it.

It was touching. And awkward.

Cupcake physically shook himself and switched tracks. "Someone has contested Cadet Blonsky and Cadet Chester's detention, and a formal enquiry is pending. We're trying to find out who's the initiator, but so far no luck."

Jim nodded. They had yet to figure out why either of those two Cadets had rated an assignment to the Enterprise – their admission requirements barely made Chester eligible, and Blonsky was actually stuck firmly beneath the cut-off line. Jim had looked it up, but he hadn't had the paranoia to follow up on the research. Perhaps that was a mistake, but he had had to prioritize – with his better half indisposed, he was just one man.

The turbolift door slid to the side.

"Captain on the Bridge!" Spock announced.

Huh, and Jim had thought that maybe Spock hadn't noticed that they were at odds. The stilted formality, however, was a clear sign that Spock had picked up on the tension, but was as of yet befuddled by the reasons for it, and reacted by retreating into his hard shell of patented Vulcan emotionlessness and logic to observe and deduce and figure Jim out.

Jim sourly wished him good luck, because he hypocritically hated it when Spock did this walls-up routine at him. He strode across the Bridge with the barest acknowledgment to the crew – an exchange of nods to satisfy a semblance of politeness – and reached the Ready Room with Hendorff steadfastly on his heels.

Once they were shut inside, Jim gestured Cupcake to pick a chair, and sat down himself.

He checked his chrono. "Almost thirty-seven hours till docking, according to the Mad'kov's projection. Hm." He glanced up at his subordinate. "Tell me everything I should know."

x

"Uhura," Jim said, stepping back onto the Bridge. Nothing was happening and nothing was expected to happen before their arrival at Earth.

"Captain," the woman replied in an almost Spock-like stiff professionalism that was supposed to convey her disapproval of his actions.

Jim gave her a mental point for conscientiousness and fortitude, but he actually had a reason for addressing her. "Get Commander Olsen from the Academy Board on the line and patch her through to Lieutenant Hendorff's comm unit."

Uhura turned to her console with a distracted 'aye'.

Jim faced the cloud of curiosity wafting from the rest of the Bridge crew. "Chekov, hand your station over to Cadet Kasheel and report to the Gym on Deck Two. Cadet Rum, while Liutenant Uhura is busy, relay the order to report to that Gym to Cadets Loqui, Brent, Sanchez, Mad'Kov and Pella. Mr Spock, should you consider it prudent, you are welcome to join us there anytime."

Jim looked at his bond-mate, trying to gauge how well his vague and unexplained orders were accepted, but Spock was letting on nothing. He merely nodded in acknowledgment and clasped his hands behind his back, which – in combination with the stony mask – could have meant discomfort or a snub.

Jim hoped for the first.

Chekov was almost out, glancing over his shoulder at Jim – like he was still expecting the other shoe to drop – and at Sulu, who looked entirely too sympathetic to be unaware of Chekov's recent shift in loyalties. Jim wished he could have been sure that Sulu was old enough and had enough sense to not let himself get suckered into the mess with the VCE… but then, he liked Sulu because Sulu was a lot like him – neither of them could be called sensible.

Jim followed Chekov and Hendorff into the turbolift and made sure to frown at his pilot before the sliding door cut off the line of sight. It was past the highest time to start taking this rope-pulling contest seriously. Instead of members of his crew getting dragged to the other side, he was going to take the VCE for himself.

Chekov shifted his weight from foot to foot. "Keptin-"

"Cupcake," Jim spoke over him, partly because he had something to say and partly to establish right now who had the upper hand in this situation. Not that Pavel was anywhere near strong enough to try and take on Jim… and Jim did not really mean to compare them to wolves fighting for the Alpha position, no matter how fitting the metaphor turned out to be.

"Jim," Hendorff replied with the informality that was usual between them outside of professional matters, deftly supporting the little play. Jim considered giving him another commendation, but that might have opened him the way to a lucrative position on another ship, and Jim rather wanted to keep him.

Chekov minutely flinched, but he kept his face straight and mouth clamped shut. His lips were pale, although his eyes narrowed rather than widened, as they would have in the past in a similar situation.

Jim paid attention to him, even as he turned to Hendorff. "When Uhura gets you Dana Olson, tell her about the _disciplinary issues_ we're facing," and about the plan they'd come up with, which he didn't say, but which Cupcake clearly heard anyway. "I'll have her support on that end of things, but I'd like to personally consult with her about the Cadets – we should rehash the roster in advance, or the brass will come to blows over this."

Cupcake solemnly nodded as though it was some sort of well-kept secret between them instead of a reckless plan they had cobbled together in the past two hours, and which was likely to see someone (probably Jim) facing court martial. Unless they would pull it off really, really well (which Jim, admittedly, counted on).

The security officer exited just above the Officer's Deck and went on his way, comm unit blinking green to signal the incoming call.

Spock was going to be so angry. So, so angry, Jim thought, feeling vindicated. Most people would have laughed off the idea of Spock succumbing to anger – showed what they knew. Spock put the heavy, gelid weight of his intellect behind his actions when moved to retaliation. If motivated, he could become truly terrifying.

"Captain," Chekov tried again, stiffly.

"I want to start on the emergency programming," Jim said, pretending to presume that he knew what the boy was going to ask. "You volunteered to be a part of it, if I recall correctly."

"Right," replied the Ensign glumly.

Jim scowled. "You may withdraw, if-"

"No, sir!" Chekov looked determined. He stuck out his chicken-like chest and pointed his nose at the ceiling.

"Go then," Jim told him a moment before the 'lift stopped at Deck Two. The timing was a simple trick, barely worth mentioning.

Chekov went without another word.

Jim instructed the computer to take him back all the way to Engineering before he dropped by the Sickbay to kidnap Bones.

Scotty was absent – perhaps he did have to sleep, after all – and so were the VCE Cadets. Jim could have checked on their project, of course. A Captain technically had access to nearly every place on board of his ship, but Scotty would have undoubtedly found out if Jim messed with the locks, and it wasn't worth the grief.

Scotty could make an impression of a disdainful older sibling better than Sam ever managed.

Unlike Bones.

Jim grinned at Chapel, and she showed her displeasure with Bones' conduct by directing Jim straight to the correct lab.

Bones in his natural habitat – a biochem lab, surrounded by glassware and pipettes and microscopes and synthesizers – was a sight to behold. He over-focused – in here he did honestly block out the outside world. He enwombed himself inside his mind, interacting with his surroundings only when he absolutely had to, like the archetype of a mad scientist, only without the muttering, the maniacal laughter and the hunchbacked assistant skulking around in the shadows (although he had a Chapel, and that was scary enough).

Jim watched him for a while, loathe to pull him out of his researching rapture. Unfortunately, they weren't at the Academy anymore, and Jim couldn't afford to waste hours of his time pretending to study curled up in the corner of Bones' lab and watching him work.

Jim waited until his friend had set down everything fragile and spoke: "Does this mean that you can synthesize something that would have the same effects as the _othuash_?"

Bones didn't startle nearly as badly as Jim had expected he would. With eyes glued to the screen displaying the data he had just accumulated, it took his brain a little while to catch up to his mouth. "Why bother- oh. So that's why your pet devil poisoned himself."

No matter how hard he tried, Jim couldn't have taken that sentence seriously, seeing as Bones spoke it while actively doing his damnedest to help Spock, with no more motivation than Jim bringing it up in a semi-casual conversation.

"Between the two of us, the devil is me, Bones." Jim passed by the glassware and glanced at the screen over the doctor's shoulder. The text might as well have been written in Klingon – in fact, chances were that he would have understood more of it. Klingon wasn't that hard to learn – certainly less complicated than biochemistry. "Ask any pedagogue subjected to me over the course of my compulsory education."

Bones nudged him to the side and went to secure all samples of whatever it was he was examining. "Yeah, why do I think his teachers would have _remarkably_ similar things to say about him?"

"Because Spock is too smart for school and secretly delights in calling people on their bullshit," Jim replied readily.

Bones raised his eyebrows at him. "While being outmatched in bullshitting only by you."

And the other Spock, Jim thought, because Spock's creativity of dishonest inclination seemed to be like fine wine – getting better with age. Surely, the formation, leading and protection of a seemingly student-run organization such as the Vulcan Conservation Effort was an undertaking beyond the native Spock's ability at this time. In twenty, perhaps thirty years Jim would hopefully have the opportunity to join him at the chessboard and watch him orchestrate putsches and protest marches to relieve the tedium of his desk-job.

Not now. Right now, he was still hacked off at the man.

Speaking of hacked off, Bones set his hands on his hips and effected his righteously offended pose. "And what sort of dumb question was that, infant? I've synthesized the sodding counter-agents to a dozen space-diseases by now, some while being infected with them. There's even a comprehensive matrix of the chemical composition here." He pointed at the terminal, indicating the ship's database.

"I'll take that as a yes." Jim grinned. "That's great!"

Bones rolled his eyes and pulled off his latex gloves. "Now, what's so pressing that you're here instead of the Bridge? And God help you, Jim, if this is about your childish need to avoid your-"

"God helps those who help themselves," Jim cut in. "And we're helping ourselves today by starting the programming for the emergency protocols. I figured that you'd want to be there."

"Will your First Officer be present?" Bones inquired, watching Jim out of the corner of his eye while he powered down the microscope (which, really, was already an affirmative answer in and of itself).

Jim pouted. "I'm not doing this to keep out of his sight. He's been invited to join the efforts, and I will most likely not stay long."

"And he's about as stubborn as you are," the man grumbled, but without further protest preceded Jim out the door. "Fine. I'll come with you, because some responsible adult needs to watch over you and yours." He grimaced at Chapel as he passed her, and the nurse grimaced right back at him – that was the way they communicated. In the next moment Bones was mutely inquiring of her if there was anything they would need him for, and was assured by her eye-roll that they were quite capable of seeing to everything that needed to be seen to.

It was almost cute, in Jim's opinion. He would have pushed Bones to try for something with her, were he not all too aware that they enjoyed their working relationship too much to mess it up for a romance that would blow up within a couple of weeks anyway.

"The Enterprise is not a kindergarten, Bones," Jim playfully protested as they entered the corridor. "They don't give out commissions to kindergarteners."

Bones snorted. "Just about."

x

Jim, with mild regret, came to the conclusion that he would not actively participate in the project.

He wanted to – for many reasons, not the least of which was that it sounded like fun – but there was simply too much he had to do, and he did not have the time for another project in addition to his duties (that usually took about twenty-eight hours a day anyway), his sessions with the guys from Security, food, sleep (although that was largely optional) and wrestling the VCE under his control.

He found an almost comfortable perch on the pommel horse, and from it he gave the introductory speech to the gathered mix of officers and cadets seated around the gym on benches, the balance beam and on the tatami. He supposed it was up to them to decide to which lab they were going to move – it wasn't going to be Medical, of course, but other than that, he had no idea and no wish to impose an arbitrary ruling upon them. A major cross-field project like this was unusual, and Jim didn't want to set any precedents for it if it could be avoided.

"Sooo," Jim drawled out, scanning the group he had had seated on the tatami, consisting mostly of the cadets. They were craning their necks to look up at him, armed with PADDs and a youthful delusion of immortality. "Who'd like to volunteer as the leader? Keep in mind it doesn't just mean that you get to order people around – it also means that if _anyone_ messes up, it's _your_ ass on the line."

He could hear Bones grumbling in his direction. Apparently, there were lines of unprofessionalism even the renowned Dragon of the Sickbay didn't like seeing crossed.

Jim shrugged and looked to the crew. There were a few raised hands.

He passed Chekov – primarily, he could admit it, out of resentment, but Chekov had nearly as many duties as Jim himself if the instruction of Cadets was counted in, and he in good conscience didn't have the time to lead a project.

The cadets he didn't even consider. There was still a chance they would not be assigned to the Enterprise, and the last thing Jim needed right now was to hand more authority to a member of the Vulcan Conservation Effort. They needed to be kept busy, but busy under the watch of Jim's own people.

"Lieutenant Jaeger," he chose before he could be accused of dithering. "Crewman Darnell will assist you."

The men both acknowledged their nomination with a nod. Jim made a note to lodge some sort of official appointment for them when he would next get to his backlog of paperwork.

He glanced around the room and figured out that it was as much of his input as they required. "Ensign Chekov has all the details of what the program should be capable of. Ensign, the floor is yours."

Chekov craned his neck and blinked up at Jim, surprised to be called on. "…yes, sir," he said with a bit of a delay.

Jim waited until he was sure that the attention had moved from him to the Russian standing in front of the group and trying to shake off his stage fright, before he nudged Bones into the side and muttered: "I'll leave this to you, and swing by the science labs to return the PADD you've borrowed."

x

Jim spent the rest of the shift on the Bridge, blocking out the mindless chatter, ignoring Uhura's and Sulu's scowls and working on paperwork. Although he didn't get why they still called it _paper_work. Surely, someone could have come up with a less anachronistic term to describe the tedium of trying not to fall asleep over a blinking PADD screen?

He finished with the routine reports and got to the requisitions. As he had half-expected, Scotty had generously padded his list of 'necessary' supplies, mostly with technology that would have meant Scotty's paranoia had driven him to establishing quadruple redundancies.

Jim knew Scotty fairly well. He knew that this stuff was going straight to the cadets, because Scotty wanted to watch them succeed.

He tagged the document as 'denied' and lay back in his chair, closing his eyes for a few seconds and afterwards blankly staring at the deactivated screen.

Replicators.

Jim suppressed a shudder.

Did Vulcans have myths of creation? Did they have a theory other than intelligent design that would have explained how so many sentient species in such distant star systems evolved so similar that they conceivably could beget progeny together?

Was Spock's existence itself not a miracle?

Jim opened his mouth to ask about Vulcan mythology before he remembered that Spock wasn't there. Bones hadn't commed yet, so chances were that Spock was busy with something separate from the project… or, alternatively, that the two of them were getting on peaceably. Unlikely, but possible.

He reached for another datapad.

"Captain," Uhura addressed him an indeterminate length of time later.

Jim glanced up.

"Beta shift is starting," she informed him, her earlier reluctance mixing with sympathy.

"Thanks, Uhura," Jim chanced.

She accepted the informality without even a sneer. "I'll collect the cadets' comprehensive evaluations for you. They will be ready by our next shift."

"Thanks," Jim repeated.

She slugged him into the shoulder (just a tough love-tap, but, damn, that woman had hard knuckles) and swanned off with most of the Alpha shift and Kasheel, who had been replaced at the helm by Johnson.

Jim rubbed his temples and checked his chrono, before he recalled that Uhura had _just_ told him what the time was. He could continue working in his cabin, and there would be far fewer distractions there. He should also check on Jaeger's people and make sure that enough of the VCE was busy there to prevent them from working on the replicator in the meantime.

"Lieutenant Johnson, you have the conn."

"Aye, aye, sir. I have the conn," Johnson replied, perfectly by the book. He had not been a member of the original Enterprise crew but had been transferred from the _Rimsky-Korsakov_ in an effort to give the flagship at least a skeleton of experienced crew. Hence the strict adherence to procedure.

Jim had learnt not to mind, although it had taken him months to find that fine balance of familiarity, practicality and order that he strove to keep. Spock had been instrumental-

And thinking of Spock, Jim bumped into him on the Officers' Deck, in front of their cabins. Not literally, of course, but some sort of acknowledgment was necessary.

"Captain," the Vulcan said with enviable neutrality.

"I apologize, Spock," Jim replied so formally that he sounded Vulcan-like to himself. It briefly startled him – and his First Officer, too, by the looks of it – but he plowed on as he was wont to. "I will not be able to make our appointment. A pressing issue arose." It was not strictly true, but just valid enough an excuse for missing chess.

Spock hesitated, and after a moment of contemplation inclined his head in acceptance. "It is prudent that you attend to your duties prior to our arrival at Terra, Captain."

Jim could practically see the shutters falling and the drawbridge being raised. He took a deep breath and swallowed, discomfited to find that neither helped against the tightness inside his chest. Breathing shouldn't have been painful.

"Bones says he'll be able to synthesize a substitute for you," Jim blurted, and barely bit down on a caustic 'unless you'd rather go on experimenting on yourself'.

Spock hesitated again. This time the pause was longer, and there were more shades of feelings emerging and disappearing, before he replied, in a low, pained voice: "Thank you, Jim."

Jim rubbed at his temple and forcefully suppressed the urge to laugh. So, this was the result of his desperate attempt at a gesture?

Spock didn't look half ecstatic. Well, he tried to school his face into what he would have likely termed 'pleased expression', but the fact was that Spock's face wasn't very well-versed in forming any sorts of expressions, much less insincere ones, and this one in particular looked rather painfully contrived.

"What did I miss?" Jim asked, depressed by his chronic – if anticipated – inability to engender happiness in those he cared for. If he remembered last night right, he had damn-near made Bones cry, and that was one Hell of a mean trick. Looking at Spock now, he had to wonder if he actually was an embodiment of a curse.

There wasn't a whole lot that hadn't turned to ashes under his hands yet.

Spock opened the door to his cabin and bid Jim to enter – obviously this was not a conversation to be had in a corridor. The air inside was colder than he expected; for Spock it must have been uncomfortable. Jim opened his mouth to ask if Spock was still feeling unwell and that was the reason for the adjusted air-conditioning, or if there was another problem, but his bond-mate spoke first.

"I am grateful for your – and Dr McCoy's – efforts, Jim." Spock set a couple of PADDs on his desk and stood in front of his bed, unusually indecisive, with his right arm raised in front of his chest like a shield, gripping his left elbow in white-knuckled fingers.

In need of reassurance, yet at the same time definitively refusing it.

"But." Jim utterly failed to make it sound like a question. It came out as a demand to elaborate, the sort he might have directed at a subordinate that had messed up their task through incompetence. He bit his tongue and promised himself that he would stop acting like a total dick.

"The purpose of my search has been twofold," Spock explained, passing over Jim's rudeness as if he hadn't noticed it. There was no doubt that he had, though. "Your solution brings immediate relief, and for that you must be commended, yet there will be coming a time when the surviving Vulcan race shall have to establish itself within the naturally existing ecosystems."

"You need to put down roots," Jim paraphrased, nodding his understanding.

His mind grabbed onto the idea and ran with it, through half-hazy memories of Tarsus as a vivid example of failed terraforming to the theoretical lessons he had attended at the Academy to the planets and space stations he had visited as the Captain of the Enterprise. He instinctively apprehended the non-viability of a society on life-support. There was a sense of temporariness to it. An entire race could not hope to sustain itself indefinitely without a stable ecotope.

Spock finally unclenched his fingers and took a slightly more relaxed position by the foot of his bed. "In the spirit of your assertion, yes. It is unfeasible for the whole population to subsist on synthesized or replicated nutrition. While there is no documented insufficiency in such nourishment, it has been proven to cause the decrease of the body's ability to metabolize a wider variety of tissue, and the weakening of its immunity system."

"Basically," Jim said, a little disappointed but not really surprised (the Federation had specialists working on these problems, so it was unlikely that he would just out of blue come up with the one genius idea that had never occurred to them), "it's fine for Starfleet officers on ships, but not really the solution to the quadrant hunger."

"To hunger, perhaps." Spock pressed his fingertips to the vertebrae at the back of his neck. It was a gesture that he would not have made in public, and it betrayed a feeling of content stemming from the like-mindedness between himself and Jim. "However, it is not the solution to re-creating the Vulcan race. Its only option is a mindless replication of Vulcan's ecosystem, and we have enough experience with terraforming projects to know that it will not work. The probability is… _negligible_," he censored himself instead of quoting the odds, reminding Jim that all was not well between them (Jim had forgotten for a few blithe moments while they had focused on a more abstract problem). "My people must find ways to adapt, for the alternative is extinction."

Jim's breath caught. 'Re-creation of ecosystem is not the solution.'

Spock was a genius.

Well, yes, of course Spock was a genius, that was a given. But right at this moment, Spock had unknowingly given Jim the answer he needed – the solution to his dilemma.

He knew what he was going to do to stop the kids from VCE before they tried to replicate their way to the conservation of a species.

"They will," Jim said with absolute faith.

Spock tacitly disagreed with what he perceived as a fallacious certainty, but he unwound enough to take a seat on the bed and demurely watch Jim leave.


	7. Chapter Five: Sweat

Chapter Five: Sweat

x

Jim clapped his free hand against his thigh and raised his voice so that the entire exolinguistics laboratory could hear him clearly. "C'mon, people, a little more down to Earth – so to speak – with your programming! Where's your common sense? I don't want a rescue team to barge in on me _in flagrante delicto_-"

The rest of his complaint was drowned out by the titters of the cadet contingent and a slew of animal sounds from the regular crewmembers, which just went to show that (with a few exceptions like Johnson and Shanks) service on the Enterprise eroded what little culture Starfleet officers brought onboard with them.

Jim pointed his finger at the lounging group of medical personnel. "Good thinking with the body temperature, Brent, but make it more discerning." He turned to the mixed group of people from command and physicists. "Mad'Kov, are Andorians hotter or cooler than the rest of us?"

"Uh?" the young Andorian expressed, antennae turning to Jim in bewilderment.

"Their body temperature is higher than humans'," Brent mused, "but they are capable of adapting to a wider range-"

"Awesome," Jim cut him off, and glanced at the IT specialists. "Adjust the code to reflect that." There was a flurry of motion while the programmers split the tasks between them. "That's why we have the doctors here, people. I know they are easy on the eyes, but their primary function is to keep us alive."

Darnell came in with a tray of finger food and glared at Jaeger. "We could have got the same from the Starfleet Medical Reference Manual-"

"Nope," Jim cut in again, making a mental note to review Darnell's performance in a leading role on the team later. Some people were not suited for leadership – that was nothing to be ashamed of, but it should be mentioned in the crewman's file. Better to see him underperform now than later on under real fire.

And since the people descended upon the food like a swarm of locusts and the last vestiges of order were thus effectively shot to Hell, Jim said: "Hey, impertinent question. How hot does a healthy Andorian male get in the middle of really good sex?"

He could read the reference to Starfleet Code of Conduct in the scandalized expressions of several of the younger crewmembers. Right, the rules about fraternization.

…who were they kidding? Jim was as good as married to _two_ people on board. Sex was a part of his daily life. Or it used to be, at least.

"Starfleet Medical Reference Manual has nothing, Captain," Sanchez reported gleefully, fortunately pulling Jim out of the rumination before he had had the chance to really sink into it.

"Color me unsurprised," Jim muttered. Even in the twenty-third century, there were still limits on the information Starfleet considered 'proper' enough to be officially distributed among its members. The prudes. "Hey, people practicing medicine! An educated guess?"

"Up to forty-seven degrees Celsius in room temperature…?" attempted Cadet Brent.

Jim, who had oodles of personal experience that he wasn't going to rehash, but which he was perfectly willing to use to show up his subordinates, grinned. "Wrong. They'd denature their proteins – and die horribly." Not that it hadn't happened to not-healthy Andorians. And Jim wasn't exactly glad that he knew that, because people joked about it being the best way to go, but it really wasn't. So much _post mortem_ embarrassment. "Anyone else wanna try?"

"Captain?" Uhura's voice rose above the din of mumbled speculation.

Jim found her standing in the door, shadowed by 'her' cadet – the one that was not a member of the VCE and despite being apparently a prodigy in her chosen field had nothing to contribute to the project.

"You, Lieutenant?" Jim teased. "Wouldn't have pegged you for-"

"There is a problem, Captain," the Cadet spoke before Uhura had the chance to try and verbally eviscerate him in front of his subordinates.

With some difficulty Jim rapidly switched tracks. He absently handed his PADD to the nearest person – Cadet Loqui – and stood to listen to the Bajoran girl's report. "Lay it on me, Rum."

"She means _you_ have a problem, Jim," Uhura said seriously. She must have been genuinely concerned, since there was not an iota of gleefulness in her tone.

Jim frowned. "Is this the kind of discussion we should be taking somewhere private?"

Uhura took a short glance around the room, then at the girl by her side, and finally shrugged. "On any other ship."

Jim nodded. He moved, leading the two women out of the room, while trying to hide his sense of apprehension behind a roguish smirk. "Then lay it on me, Rum."

The Bajoran put her hands together in a simulacrum of a thinking pose, and gave Jim a look that raised his hackles – no one that young and innocent had any business attempting to sympathize with him. "It's the two Cadets you have reprimanded and transferred, Captain. Not Chester; Chester's a nobody, but Blonsky. His Aunt is Commander Ester Cavanaugh. She's on the budget committee for the big upcoming terraforming project on Virgo Omicron Four and-" She fell silent, all of sudden, but there was no way to back out now; everyone within earshot had heard her allude to nepotism. "-he'll obviously have a nice posting on the project, but she didn't want him… underfoot."

Jim understood that. Chester and Blonsky were two aggregates of an explosive, and it took but an excuse to detonate them. He had had it up to his teeth with them, and in his teeth was where they would (figuratively) end up, if everything went according to plan.

Hendorff's people were on board, and so was Administrator Olson, it appeared.

Jim would just have to strut around and be his obnoxious self. That was something he could do without even thinking about it. Altogether too many people were occasionally struck by the urge to slap him on the head – or have him assassinated.

"She's ticked off…" Jim guessed, "…at me."

Cadet Rum cringed. She stared at him soulfully and tried to convey sincere apologies, as though he was going to shoot the messenger for bringing him ill but valuable news.

Uhura snorted. Her eyes laughed for a moment, before amusement was outweighed by concern again, and she remembered that she had actually intended to give him the cold shoulder for the way he had ostensibly relegated Spock to the periphery of his interests. "The scary thing is, now I know you don't do it on purpose."

Jim waited until the turbo-lift doors closed before he asked, genuinely disconcerted: "What _can_ she do?"

The Bajoran opened her mouth and then shut it again, realizing the question hadn't been addressed to her.

Jim didn't believe that Uhura had a better feel for 'fleet politics than he did, but she had always been ambitious and made an effort to make friends in high places (speaking of which, making friends was a talent obviously shared by Cadet Rum) and to keep her ear to the very, very figurative ground. Uhura would have a better idea about who were Cavanaugh's cohorts, and how far they would support her against Jim, who was the darling of the media and an officially confirmed hero.

Uhura deliberated so long that they arrived at the Bridge by the time she spoke: "Have some of your crewmen reassigned. Stall your promotion, if such a thing would ever happen, and let's hope it won't."

Jim strode out onto the Bridge, but unexpectedly came to a halt in the middle of it.

The Earth was displayed on the main screen. The planet was blue and grey, rich in water and heart-clenchingly familiar. There was such a sense of familiarity in the sight that he spent a moment just staring at it. Of course, there were thousands of recordings available, were he inclined to watch them, anytime at all, at his leisure, but Jim wasn't. He was more interested in the unknown, in strange planets and alien races.

Only, this was not a recording. It was for real.

He hated and loved this planet in equal measure – he would die to save it, but he wished to spend his life as far away from it as possible.

"Jim?" Uhura ripped him out of the reverie.

No time for sentimentality. He had actual problems that he had to attend to.

"What?" He smirked and rolled his shoulders in a faux-casual stretch. "I like being Captain."

"You're good at it, too," came in an undertone from the pilot's seat.

"Thanks, Sulu," Jim muttered back. He shouldn't have, but he and Sulu went back to the Academy, and their epic friendship had kicked off with a suicidal mission to destroy a drill, so the working relationship between them was mostly… lax. Until and unless Sulu would try to join an ecoterrorist organization.

"So, they can't take the Enterprise from me?"

"You would have to piss off a much bigger school of fish to land in a hole that deep."

"The Commodore could influence the future assignments of the Enterprise," Spock commented.

Of course Uhura had alerted Spock first. Even if they weren't the weirdest variation on the theme of best friends, Spock would have been present when Rum found the information and related it to Uhura… oh, damn it. There was absolutely no ground for Jim to feel slighted.

He scratched the edge of his chin and considered what kind of missions could be given to the flagship to make the crew regret crossing some bigwig. "More milk runs?" he hazarded. "More school-kids to trip over? No offence, Rum."

"None taken, Captain," the Bajoran replied equanimously.

"So, what's the battle plan?" Sulu asked, mock-threateningly cracking his knuckles.

Jim forced out a chuckle, which did help to dissolve the general atmosphere of anxiety, despite being less than heartfelt. "Hmm… let me think on it for a while. What's our ETA?"

"Four hours and eighteen minutes until docking, Captain," Spock informed him dutifully from the science station.

And there went the anxiety, ratcheting up again.

Jim smiled and nodded. "Should be more than enough time. Mr Spock, unless there are any pressing issues, I'd like to have a planning session. Also, someone find Chekov and Scotty." He turned to look at Uhura and Rum. "I need the two of you to do me a favor. I'll send the details to your PADDs."

He walked away contacting Bones through the comm. A strategy meeting with Spock and Bones was often like watching a storm happen all around him, clouds colliding, electrical discharges every which way and so much thunder. Jim couldn't imagine his life without either of these two men, but then, he knew the ramifications of letting matter and antimatter touch.

x

"I know that face," Bones grumbled a split-second after crossing the threshold. His scowl was a thing of terrible magnificence. "I _hate_ that face. Goddamnit, Jim."

He sank into a chair with a sigh, leant back, closed his eyes and with one boot propped against the table swiveled left-to-right and right-to-left, like a big, man-shaped pendulum.

Spock's infinitesimal expression shifted to evidence his disapproval of the display of slovenliness before him, and Jim wished he could just set his elbows on the desk and cover his smile behind his hands the way he usually would. He found himself robbed of his natural humor, in between the tension between him and Spock, the looming threat of political contention, the homophobic-prick-trap he had set, and the upcoming battle against the brass.

It was the latter he needed to discuss with the proverbial angel and devil sitting on his shoulders (he could never decide which friend was which supernatural advisor, and suspected that they switched up all the time to drive him yet crazier).

"The kids-" Jim started, and cut himself off. He shook his head and tried again. "I want to discuss the Cadets we have on board."

Bones straightened up as fast as if someone had stuck him with a cattle prod. "Tell me this isn't about the pair of limpdicks sitting in the brig-"

"No," Jim cut him off before Spock had the opportunity to remark on Bones' vocabulary choices. "I'm talking about the rest of them. Pugacheva, Sanchez, Rum, Mad'Kov." He paused, and out of the corner of his eye looked at Spock. "_Fitzpatrick_."

Spock didn't even blink. He definitely did not jump up to demand Fitzpatrick's continued assignment to the Enterprise – not even the Vulcan equivalent thereof. Instead, he watched Jim with that almost-reptilian gaze facilitated by his first set of eyelids.

Jim wished that weren't so arousing, and then resolutely squashed the very idea.

"If you can get them, I'd keep both Brent and Sanchez," Bones replied, trying so very hard for nonchalance that Jim let him think he succeeded, because he deserved it for the effort.

Jim made an educated guess that Bones would be happy to share the duty of autopsy with Sanchez, and Brent's qualification was somewhere in between Bones and Scotty, in that odd field of machines that made people continue breathing. He would be useful on a deep space exploration, should the Enterprise ever actually be sent on one.

"Excellent," Jim said coolly, and tapped his PADD. "I've got a blanket 'yes' from Scotty. Chekov's opinion is biased; Sulu gave me the equivalent of 'whatever' and Uhura oscillates between wanting to keep her Cadet as a pet and being jealous of Rum's exceptional _aural sensitivity_-"

That got him a blink from Spock – the Vulcan even joined his hands together. That practically rated as expressive.

"Your opinion, Mr Spock?" Jim inquired, hoping it didn't come out facetious.

Spock inclined his head. "Barring any misconduct or poor performance by the Cadets within the next four hours, I have no objection to welcoming either of them as a permanent member of the crew. The exceptions being, obviously, Cadets Blonsky and Chester."

Jim had actually thought that was obvious even without saying, but Spock's specificity was one of the things that made them such a great command team.

Bones couldn't quite see it yet, which was why he scoffed and snapped: "Don't need logic to solve that one, _Commander_. Some of us can tell when someone's too much of an asshole to work with."

Jim glanced to the side, expecting Spock to side-step the frankly offensive insinuation with a query on the relative size of the anal orifice in adult humans, keeping a straight face and pretending that he believed that was a perfectly viable topic of conversation – he knew how Spock thought, and there was poetry to his ability to diffuse or redirect offensiveness.

Spock, however, was merely looking at Jim, waiting for the next topic of discussion.

He had caught onto Jim's mood, and was trying to figure out the reasons for it, Jim was fairly certain. He was also pretty sure that it would take Spock at least half a day, but probably more, before he would come to any useful conclusions. By that time it would be too late.

Jim kicked the hornets' nest: "The disciplinary issues in their past don't concern you, then?"

"What issues?!" Bones demanded, crossing his arms in front of his chest.

Jim only saw him peripherally, because his attention – and the question – was directed at Spock.

Spock's eyebrows remained aligned. His face might as well have been hewn of marble. "I am familiar with the disciplinary issues in _our_ past, Captain," he said calmly, practically stabbing Jim's torso with every word, "and at this point any such concern would be highly hypocritical."

Jim acknowledged that he was the last person who could throw a stone, but he was a Captain, and there were all sorts of accommodations made for the people wily enough for such a post. He hadn't quite considered that Spock had hardly been a model student before he had relocated to Earth and started at the Starfleet Academy.

"Jesus Lord," Bones muttered and rolled his eyes.

Jim was so very glad for Bones' presence. At least one of them could think straight.

"In that case," Jim said, "write a recommendation and personnel request for each of the Cadets you've worked with closely enough for the paperwork to look viable. Mr Spock, I rely on you to put the documentation together – I've given the same instructions to the entire Command Crew, so they should have their forms ready."

"Aye, Captain," Spock replied, betraying nothing.

Bones said something unflattering about Jim's intelligence and morals, but he spoke so quietly that Jim could pretend he didn't hear it.

Spock pretended he hadn't heard it, either, which… wasn't exactly usual, but fair enough. "With your permission, Captain-"

"By your leave, Commander," Jim replied readily.

The instance the door snicked shut behind Spock, Bones was on his feet, looming over Jim and scowling. "What the Hell did you do to that goblin, kid? He looks about ready to start cutting from all the angst."

Jim would have liked being able to laugh it off or roll his eyes in response, but the insinuation hit too close to home – while the idea of Spock self-harming in such an uncouth human fashion was quite absurd, the man had other ways of hurting himself or risking his own well-being. It was still too soon after the anaphylactic-shock scare, and Jim wasn't ready to venture into that discussion. Not without copious amounts of Bones' alcohol.

"You know, Vulcans are right," Jim faux mused. "Feelings are really very inconvenient."

Bones incredulously stared at him for a prolonged while, then groaned and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. This time his mutterings weren't intelligible, for the good of all.

x

Jim's comm unit buzzed. He checked the message.

'Done what you asked for,' Uhura wrote. 'For the record, this is a shit plan, and you deserve any punishment McCoy inflicts upon you. Captain.' And by 'Captain' she meant 'idiot'.

Jim ignored the blatant disrespect of superior officer happening here. He off-handedly smoothed his gold command shirt and checked himself in the mirror.

Spock's cabin on the other side of the bathroom door was quiet, but it was the industrious quiet of a Vulcan hard at work. He would be there for at least another hour, missing the first wave of transport shuttles. He would have to wait at least until noon.

'Have a little faith,' Jim typed in response to his Communications Officer. 'It worked the last four times.'

The cabin was moderately tidy; his paperwork had been submitted, and Uhura had personally manhandled Bones onto the first departing shuttle and was keeping an eye on him. Cupcake was coming down with Jim, but his best guys led by Lieutenant Nored were on surreptitious Spock-watch, just in case.

Jim was ready to depart when the comm buzzed again.

'Don't give me the opportunity to say I told you so.'

x

Jim spent the flight to the surface chatting with Cupcake and the officer Cupcake had picked for Jim-sitting duty: Ensign Marie Brettschneider, who looked like she was pushing forty and had been through at least two wars. She was one of those experienced crewmembers transferred from other ships – in her case from the _USS Wellington_.

She was attractive and a little frightening, and managed to distract Jim enough that he didn't look nervous when he strode into Pike's office past a PA that smiled too widely, winked too much and didn't even try to stop him.

Pike had expected Jim, and showed no surprise at the unannounced entrance.

Jim saluted.

Pike gave him a sardonic look and waved his hand in the direction of a free chair.

That chair had been there for the past five years, and probably a lot longer. It was well-known to cadets and young officers, and it was unanimously despised.

"I'll stand," Jim said, and gestured Cupcake to wait outside.

Pike didn't bother hiding his snort.

In the political game of two technically senior officers standing off, Jim had just given a free victory in the first round to his erstwhile recruiter. It was good practice – it felt sort of backhandedly polite. Besides, today it truly was just a game.

And Pike did take an inordinate amount of pleasure from watching people either squirm in that chair of doom, or refuse to sit at all. What kind of person would Jim be if he refused an old, partly invalided man his one little delight over the course of his workday?

"How's Spock?" Pike opened with the second salvo, and he hit true.

Jim grimaced. "Back on duty, no lingering effects." Except the arctic zone that had sprung up between them, but that was neither here nor there.

"Glad to hear that." The Admiral sounded sincere; admittedly, Spock was once supposed to be his First Officer, so it was to be expected that he was at least vaguely concerned for his health. "Heard you've had a spot of trouble with the Cadets Komack had foisted off on you."

Jim shrugged. He couldn't afford to discuss that _yet_. "Most of them fit in fine, and are ready for real service. In fact, speaking of Spock, he forwarded you their paperwork." Spock hadn't actually confirmed that, but Jim hadn't lived this long by not trusting his better half implicitly.

Pike checked his datapad. He nodded. Frowned. "I'll deal with that later. Right now I'm more curious about what it is you want from me."

"I'm reporting as ordered, sir," Jim replied primly. For an instance he was the very picture of discipline.

Pike's incredulous face made Jim regret he couldn't take a photo.

"I'm told your Communications Officer was _forceful_ about setting up this appointment."

"Lieutenant Uhura has a very dynamic personality," Jim replied nonchalantly. Then he met Pike's eye. "Permission to speak freely, sir?"

Pike's incredulous face made a comeback. "Yeah, like you ever needed that."

Jim shrugged. He was beginning to sweat – the morning in San Francisco wasn't exactly balmy, but Pike was a crafty bastard, and even though Jim's surname had granted him a few get-out-of-jail-free cards with the man, those had long since run out. "I've got a ship to run, sir. No time for a court martial this spring."

Pike scoffed, exasperated. "Speak, Captain."

"I'm getting the vibe here that you didn't want me to bring the cadets back."

Pike did not even pretend to be surprised.

Jim squared his shoulders. "If so, sir, then my orders should have been more specific. Was I supposed to discreetly 'lose them' somewhere along the way? Because, one or two of them, I'd get that… but the rest aren't so bad."

"Jim…" The Admiral ran his hand through his grey hair and looked up through a pair of eerily blue eyes, makind the hair on Jim's arms stand on end. "The unofficial hope was that you'd integrate them into your crew and refuse to give them back."

"Any particular reason?" Jim inquired faux-pleasantly.

"They're…"

"Unwanted?" he offered.

Pike didn't let the insinuation throw him off. He was full of plausibly-sounding excuses: "Some are wild. Reckless. Rebellious. Straining under authority. Apathetically genius. Scary with a pair of chopsticks." He spread his hands. "Each case is different."

And that was a lie, only Jim didn't know who was its originator and who was its intended recipient. Pike might have legitimately not known about the hunt on the VCE, or he might have actually thought Jim had not found out about the Effort.

"Why me?"

"You're known for harboring several hopeless cases – yourself, for instance. Your Doctor friend, for another. _Lieutenant Commander_ Scott."

Jim chuckled mirthlessly. "Yeah, we're the cream of the crop. Too brilliant to be stifled by the oppression of the Admiralty, apparently." But the hamsters inside his head had started running at a breakneck speed, the wheels were turning, the axles squealing, the dynamos producing power and the light-bulb went _fiat lux_.

It was a shock, even though it really shouldn't have been. Jim was momentarily glad that he was used to all sorts of unpleasant surprises being sprung on him, else he might have been forced to sit down after all.

"That's why they upheld my field promotion," he stated, past the need to ask. "That's why they gave me the Enterprise – and are about to send me off into deep space. Not because I deserved it. Because I scare them, and they want me as far away from them as possible."

Pike was still looking up at him, still waiting for some resolution or backlash from Jim's side. Another time Jim might have played ball with him, but today he just didn't have the time.

"So, we're a crew of rejects."

Too awesome for the 'fleet, apparently. Their extraordinariness intimidated the brass. Jim decided to take it as a compliment.

"Except Spock," Pike qualified serenely – and that was wrong, because Spock was one of the most extraordinary people on the Enterprise, and he should have intimidated the brass a whole lot. The impression he did when he appeared to be obedient and controllable was a huge hoax, as many people had found out to their detriment, humiliation and, occasionally, severe maiming. "Nobody wanted you to get him. Not even I – don't try that, Jim. You and I both know he's wasted where he is."

"Bullshit," Jim pressed out through gritted teeth. Alright. So the Admirals were collectively half in love with Spock. Too bad for them. Spock was where he belonged, and he enjoyed himself plenty – he definitely wouldn't have found a hundredth as much _joie de vivre_ in some musty dirt-bound basement.

Pike leant back in his comfortable padded office chair, laced his fingers together and settled them on his knee. "The thing with Spock is, if he wants something, you can bet your irrational ass he's going to go after it hard. And, for whatever _perfectly logical_ reason, the son of a gun decided he wanted to be _your_ ex-oh."

Jim stopped himself from reacting to the sarcasm. Spock had had a slew of logical _and_ sentimental reasons for taking a chance on Jim. And on the Enterprise.

Pike smirked. "He practically stowed away on the Enterprise, too – he was one strongly worded comm to the brass away from getting grounded for life in the SanFran labs."

Now _that_ would have been a loss – for the Starfleet, for Spock, and for Jim. The scope would have been tragic. Spock alone had saved the Enterprise on good half a dozen occasions; he and Jim together had done it about a dozen times, and then there were those cases when Spock's help had been invaluable, even if the final 'save count' went to someone else. In fact, Jim was pretty sure that the boys from Security were keeping an actual score, and that Spock was the uncontested leader… if only because Jim was the one who let himself be taken hostage so he could cool his heels in captivity and wait for his First Officer to save the day. They had the routine down to art now.

One of these days they would have to finally file the official partnership documentation – they had put it off as inconsequential, but if the brass was on the verge of trying to take Spock away by force, they had better get to it post haste.

Jim forced his mind back onto the matter at hand after barely a blip of inattention, which Pike had caught – of course he did, he had deserved his stripes fair and square – and most likely ascribed to Jim still being a little goofy about his Captaincy of the Constitution class vessel currently in orbit and trying to hide it in a professional setting.

Whatever helped him sleep at night.

"He's a rebel at heart, sir," Jim said, because that was what Pike expected to hear, and he grinned, because impertinence was his call-sign.

The Admiral didn't quite write him off as an infatuated moron – unfortunately for the political hopscotch Jim decided to hop through here, he had showed too many of his cards, and his mental faculties weren't generally being questioned anymore. Pity.

"He's a Vulcan," Pike said instead.

Jim didn't laugh into his face. That would have been unprofessional. Also, he really didn't have the time for court martial.

_Half-Vulcan_. People always forgot that, for whatever reason. After having met a few Vulcans, Jim got it. Spock was only just learning to relax his Vulcans-outVulcanning straitjacket.

"Whatever helps you sleep at night, Admiral," Jim spoke his earlier thought out loud, going for the well-worn mask of perpetual insolence. He was all too aware that Spock was tied for the second hardest head on his ship. Jim's, of course, was _non pareil_, but Bones and Spock were equal in ways that ensured Jim a daily dose of hilarity – if they weren't currently too busy joining forces to save everyone.

"I sleep like a baby, thank you for asking, Captain."

There was a distant noise of a squadron of shuttles lifting off of the Starfleet Academy port; they could be seen out of the office window, rising above the terminal, the city's skyline, the roof of the adjacent Academy building. They fell into formation just below the clouds and there they disappeared up, _en route_ for the second wave of the Enterprise crew.

The window of opportunity was beginning to close.

"How about you tell me what's the point of keeping me from my early lunch, Jim?" Pike asked, sliding into that particular mixture of droll humor and dead seriousness he used when he wanted Jim to be straightforward with him. He never overused it, and Jim found that it still, years later, worked on him.

"You'll find out in a couple of hours, Chris," he replied. "I just needed to be seen attending a private meeting with an Admiral. My thanks for being so accommodating."

"If you incriminated me in anything, I'll have your stripes," the other man threatened.

Jim nodded and gestured toward Pike's PADD. "If you find the time, have a look at those forms. We do need them processed before the Enterprise takes off."

Pike reached for the device instantly, as though he had not just been complaining about having to postpone his meal.

Jim resolved to leave him to it; he managed to almost get out of the office before Pike addressed him, proving that his exit wasn't nearly as inconspicuous as he had hoped it would be.

"Does it matter, Jim? Why you retained the Captaincy."

"No."

Jim turned back to look at the very picture of hero worship and survivor guilt hopelessly mixed together and transferred to the son of their erstwhile object. Jim knew who his friends were, and he wasn't about to hold _his dad's_ friend to any unspoken promises. He figured he knew what Spock would think, even if he would not say it.

'I told you so.'

'I knew from the start.'

'It never mattered to me.'

'It was worth it.'

"Admiral, I am Captain James T. Kirk of the _USS Enterprise_." That, he rather thought, encompassed everything important he might have wished to discuss with Pike. Because whatever else Pike wasn't, he _was_ the guy who had scraped Jim off of the spit- and alcohol-covered floor of a dive bar in Riverside, dusted him off, and waved a carrot in front of his nose to set him on this course.

"I," Pike replied with no small amount of sarcasm, "am relieved."

x

Jim took the scenic route – right across the T'Plana-Hath Park – to the accommodations that have been provided for the otherwise homeless crewmembers. He had been assigned a dormitory room to share with Bones – as per their current paperwork – and it was already nearly five minutes past T-time.

He was beginning to feel anxious. If he had miscalculated, he would have to let two sociopaths into the 'fleet, and might end up with them on his roster, too.

And this wasn't the right time to consider that Spock might have had relevant input about the mission… had Jim asked him.

The park stretched across the Starfleet Academy campus and was walled off with a line of thuja trees to achieve the illusion of separating the Academy campus from the wider world. There was a fence behind the trees, easy to climb over if you knew where and when, and shielded from the security cameras by the thujas. Out there, in the land of the civilians, towered a construction of steel that bore a flickering billboard the size of a tennis court, and informed all those civilians that 'they' wanted 'you' for their new recruit. That would have been absurd enough by itself, except that the background was a familiar picture: the panorama of the Enterprise Bridge – complete with the Alpha shift Crew. Billboard-Jim himself laughed at something billboard-Sulu said and turned to give the camera his flirty eyes which, granted, were just shy of bedroom eyes, so it appeared as if he truly _wanted_ that new recruit.

It made him a little uncomfortable-

"Confirmed!" snapped a voice at the edge of his hearing.

Jim spun to face that direction.

Everyone in sight except his own people was wearing the Academy reds. More than half of them were talking into their comms.

"Hostiles," Marie hissed, covering the shiny side of her phaser with her palm while keeping the weapon at the ready.

"Three- four- _six_ sighted," Cupcake replied, and his voice jumped.

Jim crouched and did another sweep of the surroundings. Six was already more than they had expected. Perhaps he truly hadn't thought this through enough.

"_More_," Marie corrected.

There, on the other side of the park, fortunately out of the kill zone, was Bones.

Jim needed to have Bones close by, just in case, but he hadn't expected the stubborn jackass to be quite _that_ close. Much less with Christine Chapel hovering at his shoulder, because she was the human equivalent of a bloodhound and could sniff out blood before it was even shed.

A single look in Cupcake's direction was enough to conclude that the Lieutenant was not going to be pried away from Jim without a crowbar and a pair of oxen.

Marie took in the scene and moved into position between the two medical personnel and the battlefield, raising her phaser the moment a red uniform appeared within striking distance of her CO.

The attack came swiftly, as if the boors still hoped to bank on the moment of surprise.

The first two were big and dumb, typical Security grunts; the third one was sinewy, with a glint of crazy in his eyes and a blade in each hand. There were a few others staying back and playing at providing cover. There was a Tellarite – what even?

"Boys, haven't you heard?" Jim panted, ducking under a phaser beam. "The universe is one big, fat cock – you either learn to suck it, or it will fuck you up the ass."

That got them mad.


	8. Interlude: Blood

Interlude: Blood

x

Len's jaw dropped. "Jesus H. Christ, Jim."

Chapel stared with her eyebrows hiding somewhere behind her bangs. "_That_ was _impressively_ offensive."

Len had not the slightest goddamn inkling of what was happening, but he was beyond certain that it was all Jim's fault.

Phaser fire was exchanged, and a woman half Len's size grabbed him and pulled him into cover behind a stone flowerpot. Chapel was sprawled there already, and she reflexively raised her elbow, giving Len a shiner as he fell onto her.

Skipping the useless apologies, they both shifted into crouch. Christine didn't carry a phaser. Len reached for his only to realize that he didn't have it on himself, because he had expected he would be safe in San Francisco. That would teach him.

The tiny security officer, Cupcake and Jim had between them downed seven of the ambushers, and sent the rest running – they didn't get away, though; as far as Len could see, passers-by were proactively detaining them. At the corner of the bistro, a doll-faced girl who couldn't be eighteen yet tripped a running gorilla and kicked him in the head.

Len didn't have to be a genius to crunch the numbers. Seven attackers down meant that Jim had known. This was expected. Worse, this was _planned_. He was going to tie that kid to a bed until he learnt the meaning of the word 'self-preservation'.

Only, Len realized, forgetting to breathe for an instance, Jim wasn't standing anymore.

Jim was prone, lying half on the walkway, half on the grass, and Len didn't even notice as his feet carried him over, just knew when he was landing on his abused knees, hands outstretched, searching for the wound.

Jim's eyes were wide and foggy. A blow to the head, certainly. Maybe just from falling. Much deserved. Concussion likely bordering on sure.

Dislocation – Len could see that angle under the gold fabric. And – goddamnit Jim! – broken ribs. Caved in, too. Shit. _Shit-shitshit_.

"…aaalriiight…" the idiot rasped wetly (and Len was going to seriously, seriously kill him one of these days, kill him _dead_), "I might not have thought that through…"

Chapel had removed the command shirt and was working on the undershirt; an unknown cadet was holding a tricorder so that Len could see the readings.

"Jim, goddamnit!" he grumbled on autopilot, "I'm a doctor, not a miracle ma- actually, I know where you mighta got the notion that I'm your personal miracle-maker, but that doesn't make me a wizard, you wretched child!"

"Hey… Hey, Bones-"

"Jim, for fuck's sake!" Len held the idiot as Chapel called for a beam-up, because they could get to the Enterprise Sickbay faster than to the Starfleet Hospital. "Please, please… stop fucking smiling!"

Jim blinked slowly, and the smile widened. "I can't, Bones."

Len opened his mouth to yell something obscene, but then he was exploded into atoms.

x

He might have been deathly exhausted, but unlike some lesser men, Len gulped down two bourbons, caught a second wind and went straight for the hobgoblin, who was standing in the Sickbay, stiff and still as a statue, hands clasped behind his back and eyes glued to the screen that was showing Jim's vitals.

"Spock, tell me you knew nothing of this idiocy!"

The man half-turned his head to the side, took a deep breath, and said, in a blood-pressure-raising monotone: "Doctor, I assure you that I value Jim's wellbeing greatly. I would not have supported such a dangerous and ill-prepared plan."

"Oh, good. So he's gone off half-cocked again. I thought you being brain-welded to him meant you'd know when he was about to do something stupid."

"I would not invade Jim's privacy in such crass manner, Doct-"

"Very good. God forbid the Vulcan voodoo would actually be useful for something. Like saving Jim from himself." And now Len was starting to contradict himself, which he despised in other people, but he genuinely could not decide whether a mental leash on Jim was more or less palatable than allowing him to get himself killed due to lack of supervision.

"You are upset, Doctor," Spock pointed out the obvious, tone as placid as ever.

"A-plus on humanity one-oh-one, Commander – that was such a clever observation."

"And exhausted," Spock added, completely ignoring Len's sarcastic retort. He faced forward again and watched the lights blink regularly and the values hold steady.

"So good on you, being respectful of people's privacy," Len pressed through clenched teeth, and abstractly considered giving himself a tranquilizing hypo before he said something and he would regret tomorrow. It seemed to have worked for Jim.

"Jim has indicated his preference for separation from my person recently, and I find the notion of disregarding his wishes to be abhorrent, and such hypothetical action inexcusable."

"I'll show you _inexcusa_-"

"Doctor!" Uhura called out, striding into the hospital wing, with an entourage of crew members following in her wake (minus Sulu, who was presumably left in charge). The look she gave Len suggested that she had a good idea of what he had been about to say, and he should be grateful that she had prevented him from finishing his sentence. "I take it the Captain will pull through."

"No thanks to whichever of you enabled this so-called 'plan' of his."

Uhura looked at him blankly. Beautiful though she appeared, Len could tell she was a snake in the grass before she had even graduated. And she considered herself to be an Amazonian or something, so of course she had gone along with James T-for-Trouble Kirk's schemes.

Cupcake – _Hendorff_, Len actually did remember the man's name – didn't even bother to play innocent. Scotty just looked jittery, and he likely wasn't capable of feeling guilt at all, so that must have been sheer fear for Jim.

"Is the Keptin vell, then?" Chekov asked into the fallen silence.

"Owing to Doctor McCoy's effort," Spock replied oh-so-graciously, as if an acknowledgment of Len's actions was going to absolve him in Len's eyes. Tough luck for the pointy-eared ambassador's brat kid.

Uhura let out a series of sounds that was probably a language, because Spock's eyes narrowed in reaction. He replied in the same language, with far more ease, which made Len think it was probably Vulcan gobbledygook and wonder how Jim could understand anything of it. Unless, of course, Spock had transplanted it directly into his brain, which sort of made Len want to vomit just thinking about it.

"Yes, sir," Uhura said in Standard, looking faintly chastised.

Len found that he couldn't articulate even a passably sane response to that. He let the linguists chirp and growl at each other and examined the nearest cabinet. There was nothing especially dangerous inside, seeing as it was freely available to anyone who walked into the Sickbay, so he selected the most viable hypo and gave himself a vitamin shot. It would work as a substitution of stimulant for up to twenty minutes, which was more than he needed, and then it would let him crash like Wall Street (and yes, he had an idea of what that idiom meant – blame Jim's taste in movies).

"If you're done chattering," Len snapped dryly, "someone can start explaining to me what the Hell happened to put your Captain into surgery." He left no room for argument, and ignored the – honest to God – _reproachful_ _expression_ Spock aimed at him for not claiming Jim as his own captain.

The day Spock had to deal with the dunce as his patient, Len might concede to have that conversation.

"I think," Chekov said, "it started vay before-"

And then he wasn't the only one speaking anymore.

"I had direct orders-"

"Me, I'm a wee bit confused about-"

"Sorry, Doctor, you know how he is-"

Their voices mingled and coalesced into a throbbing headache. Len pressed two fingers to his temple and squinted, but it wasn't helping much. He managed to put together enough of the four separate narrative threads to gain a sketch of an idea.

He raised his hand for silence.

Spock stepped forward (and at any other time Len would have found it hilarious that half of the Alpha Shift subconsciously backed away). "Allow me to recount. Captain Kirk discovered that due to improper conduct of their relations, it was likely that Cadets Chester and Blonsky would escape punishment and be allowed to become Commissioned Officers of the Starfleet, and thus devised a highly perilous and poorly thought-out plan. He allowed them free under the presumption of their release being facilitated by a clerical error, and then-"

"Gave them enough rope to hang themselves," Hendorff cut in, "sir-"

"-provided them with the opportunity to assault him, risking himself and several other crewmembers for the sake of a public altercation that would… _prove his point_." Spock said the last three words with inflection that cast doubt not only on Jim's intelligence, but on his species and mating habits as well, which was too much irony for Len to digest all at once.

Hendorff stood at parade rest, swallowed, and remained silent.

If Len didn't know how fragile the carpal bones were, he would have punched him in the face.

Spock, interestingly, looked like he was considering if he could come up with a reason why punching in the face was logical, and go through with it.

"Uhm'a cut a bitch," Uhura said with outrageous, over-exaggerated accent, glaring at the door that hid Jim from sight.

Scotty ducked to hide behind Len.

x

The good thing about having a Cadet specialized in medical engineering at his disposal was that Len suddenly had a lackey who knew how to add little bits and bobs – _subroutines_ and _alerts_ in tech-savvy-speak – to existing _protocols_ to make sure that patients stayed put, or at least that Len was informed when they made their escapes.

Wise to the ways of Jim Kirk, Len had not bothered to inform him about any of the upgrades, which was likely the only reason why he was now even aware that the idiot who had been shaking hands with the Reaper some twenty hours before had decided to roam the corridors. He put down his reading, armed himself with the standard set of hypos and went on a hunt.

He did not manage to catch up to a barely ambulatory Jim until the rec room, and by then Jim was shutting off the terminal and giving Chapel a beatific smile that would have been so much more convincing without the bruises. Half the kid's face was blue and green. Len wished holding back with the dermal regenerator would have worked as a lesson, but that much optimism couldn't actually fit inside one human being, so he just refrained from healing the tiny boo-boos out of spite.

Chapel's preternatural patient-wrangling ability made Len respect her (to the point that he courteously ignored her horrible, incomprehensible character flaw of a non-abating crush on Spock) and he was not even surprised that she had gotten to Jim faster, and was already in the process of shanghaiing him back to the Sickbay where he very obviously belonged. Len loomed threateningly in the background and waved a hypo whenever appropriate, but Jim was, thankfully, still too out of it to make too much trouble.

Len was a little worried about what he might have used the terminal for, but he figured that if it was to moon some stuffed-up dignitary in his drugged high, they would find out soon enough and it would be up to Spock to deal with it.

"Hey, Bones," Jim muttered, letting himself be dragged down the corridor. "Bones, I'm gonna have a party."

Len's muttered response was less than enthused; Chapel's was unsuitable for mixed company.

"No, really-" Jim was cut off as between Len and Chapel they manhandled him into a biobed in the main part of the Sickbay, where he would be under near-constant watch. The nurse ignored his whiny attempts at protesting and tied his wrists to the bed-frame.

"Sleep," Len ordered and went right back to his office, where he had been lounging before the escapee-alarm had sounded.

"I've invited guests!" Jim called out after him.

For his sake, Len hoped it wasn't the truth. He sat down heavily and glared at the PADD, unwilling to pick it up and read some more on the recently isolated gene for prehensile mouth-tentacles, or whatever that particular organ was supposed to be. It looked like the Loo'mi were perpetually eating spaghetti, only with more wriggling happening. Now if they had found out how to eradicate stupidity or lack of self-preservation in specimen through genetic engineering, that would be worth reading up on-

"Bourbon?" Chapel quipped, sneaking into the office and swiftly shutting the door behind her. She didn't bother waiting for a response and went straight for the right cabinet. "I'm willing to share, seeing as it's _your_ bottle in the first place. Too bad you don't have gin. But bourbon's better than Scotty's moonshine…" She trailed off, pouring two cups and carrying them over.

Len took his and thought about protesting. Something along the way of 'the woman trying to make him an alcoholic…' only then she would have told him that there was no 'make him' in there, and if he thought he was fooling anybody he should have his head examined.

Rather than open himself to ridicule, Len obediently clinked his cup against Chapel's (and how come she had a leg to stand on? She was not protesting against drinking bourbon out of _cups_) and swallowed, failing to cherish the burn along his esophagus.

"Why won't the stupid kid take it into his stupid blond head that there are people who would go to Hell and back for him?"

"Do not make that into an observation on blondes, Doctor," Chapel warned, trying to lighten the atmosphere but at the same time meaning that as a serious caution.

Len wasn't the sort of a man who told jokes, and if he did tell any, they wouldn't be the sort of less-than-funny generalizations about blondes (he knew Chapel) or Scots (he knew Scotty) or policemen (he had known a few in Georgia and an intimidating number in San Francisco, courtesy of Jim) or married life (there was nothing funny about marriage – it was a valley of tears, one way or another, and he was a living proof of that).

He looked at the woman; she looked back at him with sympathy. It was possible that she knew what it was like to care for someone to the point that you would die for them without the slightest hesitation and watch them treat their own survival as inconsequential, but he rather doubted it.

He found that he didn't have anything to say to her that wasn't at least eighty percent profanity – and he valued his own life too much to risk that.

x

It was a quiet couple of days.

Len had a special place in his heart for quiet days. They were few and far between, and they inevitably ended in some sort of disaster, in the middle of which was the CMO directing triage or improvising an untested procedure on a dying crewmember (and four times out of five this crewmember was James Kirk).

Getting in after lunch, Len found that Jim was not where he had been put.

He wished he were surprised. At least a little bit.

Keeping that Hell-raiser stationary was always a battle. Since Spock and his 3-D chessboard were curiously but firmly absent, the general consensus in the Sickbay was that for the sake of the sanity of everyone involved, Jim had to be allowed a PADD. That explained the lack of alarm – well, at least Len had had the satisfaction of it working once. He hadn't actually subscribed to the fancy idea that it might work on Jim in the long term.

"Computer, what is the location of Captain Kirk?" he asked.

"No data," the synthesized voice replied, and no, Len was not going to hit his head against the nearest flat surface.

Really, he was not.

He was going to go about this – damn Spock, if only for posterity – _logically_.

He pulled out his comm. "Scotty," he growled, "is Jim in Engineering?" Because the idiot would gravitate toward places that were least conductive to his healing.

"Me shift ain't gonna start till eight, Doctor," the Scotsman replied.

Len waited. There were voices on the other side, quiet and distant, but unless Scotty was hosting an orgy, he was not in his room, sleeping, like he had tried to imply.

"…he ain't here."

If he wasn't in Engineering, and not on the Bridge (the people there would know better than to not report Jim to Len if he turned up there), then he was… probably in the gym.

The gym was occupied, but not quite full. For it being a gym, there was very little physical activity going on. Cadets were sitting around on the tatami; one dark-eyed girl was perched in the centre of the beam, with _Chekov_ sitting on the floor, leaning back against her knees and apparently sleeping. Instead of frolicking and partying down on the surface, they were sardined up here and chattering informally about Jim's Big Brother project. As it usually went with hyper-creative genii, a few were typing away at their PADDs, making notes, searching out facts, stringing together material for further coding…

It was a sight to make a sober man weep.

There was no time for tears, though, because a moment later Len finally spotted Jim, and of course the absolute ass wasn't lounging around with the kids, but instead _ambling_ forwards, treadmill set on the lowest available setting.

Len practically teleported across the room to him. "You do not walk off broken ribs!"

"Do, too," Jim shot back, and Len knew that Jim had done so in the past, but that was before Len was personally responsible for – and personally _invested in_ – his well-being.

"Off this thing!" Len ordered, and was not going to acknowledge any argument.

"C'mon, Bones…" Jim tried to cajole, but was already climbing down from the contraption, and doing so gingerly enough to illustrate all Len's points, "a healthy hamster needs his wheel."

Len seized the opportunity. He felt a smirk stretch his face, as he countered: "What a healthy hamster needs is a diet of fiber."

Jim's face fell comically. Revenge – healthy, wholesome, _wholegrain_, good-for-Jim revenge – was going to be sweet.

With fond recollection of his grandmother, Len reached out for Jim's ear. Jim dodged, and so saved himself the indignity of being dragged out of the room like an oppositional toddler (which would have been fitting, Len maintained, as there was little difference between Jim and an oppositional toddler, aside from the commission). Len satisfied himself with a firm grip on his friend's collar and the defeated stoop in the set of the kid's shoulders.

"Why would you think that was a good plan?!" Len grumbled, and he had intended to inquire calmly and rationally, so that just went to show how Jim made calm and rationality impossible by sheer proximity. "Why the Hell didn't you just put the two bastards in front of a disciplinary committee?"

"Because Cavanaugh woulda shielded them, and then tried to get back at us." Jim gave him one of those tiny, lopsided, bitter smiles that made Len feel violent, and the knowledge hung heavy between them, because they both knew it was the truth.

It was how the world worked. It was how you were head-over-heels in love on one day, and church-mouse poor the next, because you trusted the wrong person. It was all you owned to your name packed up in a single bag and your soul sold to the Starfleet. If there was justice in the world, Len wouldn't have been on this hunk of aluminum, hurtling through space. Jim was just that much wiser than him from the get-go (perhaps not from Jim's get-go, but no one's get-go would have come up at eleven-years-old in a just world).

Jim leant against the wall of the turbolift and slowly blinked at Len. "This way it was public, and she can't hush it up. We've got _lever_-age on her."

Len rolled his eyes at the pun on a homophobic slur. He supposed that in this situation it was somewhat appropriate, in a childish way, but it still made him want to inflict head trauma on the stupid kid that just couldn't stop stupidly risking his stupid neck.

He strode into the Sickbay so brusquely that an Ensign jumped backwards out of his way, tripped over her own feet and almost fell into a surgery set-up. Jim was caught by two nurses – each grabbed one of his sleeves and tugged – that uncompromisingly forced him back into his biobed and re-fastened the bindings to make an escape that much more complicated for him. Not impossible, but Len couldn't have everything.

Resolving to have the replicators available to Jim sabotaged so that they only offered the vegetarian option, Len slammed the door of his office behind him. It did give him a tiny jolt of satisfaction, and he moved to lean back against the slab of plastic to soak up the feeling.

Unfortunately, Spock was waiting for him inside the room, looking like an extra from a Transylvanian vampire movie – and damn Jim's eccentric taste in classic cinematography – except he wasn't hanging upside down from the ceiling.

"I take it there are good news, Doctor," the Vulcan said, toneless as usual.

Len gritted his teeth. Since when could this pointy-eared menace read him that well? And in return the goblin was as good as a block of granite, and when he went for the 'expressionless' routine, Len could only ever read him by reading Jim's responses – how Jim could get anything out of that face other than 'humans are illogical' and 'your argument is invalid' was a mystery.

"Good?" Len scoffed. "He's breathing, yeah. On the other hand, he's predictably remorseless." He was ready to either break out a new bottle of bourbon or start breaking other things. Blonsky's head, for instance. He could even make it look like an accident. Probably. Something akin to 'slipped and fell out of an airlock, impossible to recover his body – how very tragic' or some such.

Damn Hippocratic Oath.

"That is indicative of the Captain's improved heath, indeed," the hobgoblin said then, and this time Len heard the sarcasm loud and clear.

"It's only a matter of time till he breaks himself so badly even I won't be able to put him back together! You could at least express _a little_ concern for _your husband_, you frigid machine!"

The unbelievable bastard _blinked_ and _raised an eyebrow_. "I believe, Doctor, that you will find the Captain is lawfully wedded to you, and therefore _your_ husband."

Len's heart skipped a beat. However uncomfortable he might have been with the status quo, this was one catastrophe he didn't want to ever face. "If you try to get rid of-"

"_Worla_!" Spock honest-to-God growled, shocking Len into jumping and plastering himself against the door.

It might have been the first time Le had heard the hobgoblin cut someone off. At least he was finally admitting that he was pissed, too. Well, _good_.

"So," Len spoke, as smugly as he could while wanting to alternately rip Jim's head off and his own hair out, "your _bond-mate_… will be fine this time. If you need a collar and leash for him, I can recommend a discreet Eyeseen shop that delivers within the Sol system."

The Vulcan joined his hands behind his back. "Your offer is noted, Doctor; however, I believe that Jim has an encompassing personal collection of similar paraphernalia, so it should not be necessary."

Len wished he could un-hear that. He wished that very hard, and in the midst of all the yearning it took him almost half a minute to realize that he was blocking the asshole's only exit from the room.

He remedied that situation immediately.

x

Jim was being a dumb pain in the ass, but Len was used to that, and he knew to expect it, and he had plenty of ways of subverting it and otherwise dealing with the exasperation, most of which didn't even have anything to do with psychotropics. Len was inventive like that (and Chapel helped).

He was already on the verge of thinking that this whole episode would pass and he would be able to congratulate himself on managing the whole deal so well, when he was called away from his mission to procure breakfast to put in an appearance on the Bridge.

It was half-empty, since they were still in the orbit. Chekov and Sulu were missing, and Jim was still in the infirmary. Out of the usual four-to-six support crewmembers there were two: an Ensign in the helm's seat that pulled out another chocolate-covered nut out of a bag even as Len watched, and a red-shirt that watched the proceeding from under hooded eyes. Len recognized neither of them.

"What now?!" he demanded.

"We have a delegation from the Vulcan Embassy requesting beam-up," Uhura reported to both him and Spock, seeing as Scotty had locked himself up in Engineering and refused to come out until the refits were done, which basically left Len and Spock to take joint guardianship of Jim's damn spaceboat.

"Grant the request, Nyota," Spock said, to everyone's shock.

Len doubted he had ever heard the Vulcan address anyone except Jim by their first name, much less while they were on duty.

Uhura just blinked, and apparently managed to read enough from Spock's face (_how_?!) to simply turn away and recommence communication with their soon-to-be guests.

"I'll leave you to deal with it." Len was far too busy with more important things than 'logical' schmoozing, and had absolutely no intention to participate in whatever complication Spock was inviting.

He wished he had waited with his exit, because Spock joined him in the turbolift and confidently selected both their destinations.

"The delegation will come by the Sickbay, Doctor."

Len was sincerely glad for the warning, but the anger at being made into a show far outweighed any positive emotion he might have been inclined to feel. "You try that, and I will have _Chapel_ kick you out."

Spock raised an eyebrow. And walked out of the turbolift, leaving Len to glare at his back until the door closed again and the lift moved.

Sometimes it would have been so much more comfortable to have a _normal_ First Officer. Someone prone to pettiness and envy and shoulder-checking. Someone who would make threats, which Len could laugh at and be assured in the knowledge that it was empty boasting, because Jim – his best friend – would never allow anything like that to actually happen. Someone who would matter less to Jim than Len himself did – and there it was, the jealousy, the one genuine feeling of Len's that Spock didn't actually deserve, and yet engendered anyway.

It made Len feel more human to admit to it.

The problem with this hypothetical other First Officer was that Jim would have killed him within two weeks, and Len would be the one tasked with making it look like an accident (and that was in the instance that either of the incompetent bumbling fools wouldn't have destroyed the ship in the process). Spock was, in his irritating, glass-house-dwelling, pretentious way, a blessing.

Len still wished the threat had been empty posturing when, forty minutes later, the delegation crossed the threshold of the Medical. It consisted of a single Vulcan, old by the standards of his own race but not quite wizened, whose eyes unmistakably zeroed in on Jim and whose mouth twitched in a half-familiar way.

Len stood. He couldn't believe his eyes. They were telling him _bullshit_. This _wasn't_ happening.

"As you can see," Spock said primly, hands joined behind his back, "he is reasonably well."

The old Vulcan actually – honest to God – _quirked a smile_. "I have been assured of that much when he attempted to contact me." Were Vulcans even allowed to be openly _fond_ of someone? Or was Jim just an exception _everywhere_? "I am curious as to the reasons for his sudden attempt at communication."

"He was half-delirious, I'm sure," Len grumbled, narrowing his eyes at the Vulcan who turned the goddamn _smile_ at him and took a step forwards, effectively blocking Spock from sight.

Only, Len knew those eyes. They were human eyes. And he knew that dental irregularity, too, not to speak about the ridge of the malformed cervical vertebrae where human DNA crashed against Vulcan genes. That had taken a couple of surgeries in early infancy to sort out, according to the files, and left a very specific scar.

Len blinked, but the personage was still standing in front of him, old and _aggressively friendly_.

"Is this some kind of genetic predisposition?" Len wondered. "You're doomed to being nuts about that damn idiot?" He waved his hand in the direction of Jim's bed, where Jim was sleeping off the latest dose of drugs administered by a nurse who had lost her temper with his antics (and he had done it on purpose, too, knowing how it would end, so he had no right to complain).

"Doctor…" said the old Vulcan, with earnestness yet more aggressive than the friendliness, "I have loved James Kirk beyond the telling of it."

And Len was glad that he had skipped lunch, because he would have – honest to God – vomited it all over the floor.


	9. Chapter Six: Milk

Chapter Six: Milk

x

"Could the two of you _please_ stop competing for the most debilitating injury?" Bones complained. "I assure you, no one is amused."

"Doctor," Spock spoke, "I would not-"

"Right now I couldn't care less about what you would or would not, Spock. I need to talk to you – and by talk I mean _I_ will be doing the talking. This is not a debate. Outside." And, because that obviously wasn't specific enough for the audience, the doctor added: "_Now_."

Jim could read the telltale signs of shock in Spock's posture and in the reflexive twitch of his fingers. Spock moved his hands behind his back – another clear indication of being out of sorts – and went with Bones, carefully keeping at least two feet of distance between them.

Jim felt so much sympathy for him. He would have liked to convince Bones that Spock hadn't had anything to do with the plan, but opening his mouth and vocalizing his thoughts seemed to him like a task too gargantuan to even attempt to undertake. Spock, though, hadn't ever had to deal with Bones in such a deplorable mood. This was supposed to be Jim's – Jim's obligation, his task and privilege. Bones was his… he couldn't say husband, even though that's what their files showed. But certainly best friend.

Jim used to be the only one allowed to see the non-public faces of Leonard McCoy.

Was it possible that Spock and Bones were finally becoming friends?

Fairly sure that he was dreaming anyway, Jim let the drugs pull him under.

x

"…precipitated by his reaction to the event – it did have its – I would hesitate to say _logical_, yet certainly – _causal_ sequentiality… whereupon I was forced to admit the rationale behind his response, and tender my excuses."

"To no avail?" asked another voice, in a tone that implied that he already knew the answer he would momentarily hear.

"Indeed. At this point I am forced to conclude that it is purely an emotionally fueled reticence, for which I have found no remedy but patience. I cannot, however, disclaim its inherent capacity for hurtfulness."

"In that case, you should-"

"Hey…" Jim said, or maybe just whispered, because his throat wasn't really in the best condition.

Either way, it was enough to get the attention he wanted. Both Spocks looked at him, and both moved reflexively – funnily enough, the old Spock stood by Jim's biobed yet clearly expressed admonishment and pleasure at the same time, while Jim's Spock crowded in, staking his ownership to the point that he actually _sat on the edge of the bed_ – this might have sounded pedestrian, but it was in fact a huge thing for Jim – while keeping his face carefully expressionless.

The old Spock looked like he was barely holding back from laughing at his younger iteration.

"You asked for me, Jim," the Ambassador stated the obvious, stepping onto familiar ground, markedly making this whole thing as easy on Jim as he could. Because he was a really nice person, and not an asshole like Jim's other friends were. Aside from the whole 'lying about not being able to meet the other Spock' thing… which just negated all Jim's arguments. Alright, so he was an asshole, but he was _nice_ about it.

"And here you are," Jim said, pointlessly, because he was an idiot.

Old Spock proved the 'nice' hypothesis when he put a conveniently placed ice chip into Jim's mouth and wait until Jim was ready to try and speak again.

This time Jim made certain that he would expend his effort on saying something that had an actual point. "Your kids."

Both Spocks raised both their eyebrows. That was, all four eyebrows between them. It was a funny sight. Less funny in context.

"I am not aware of ever having sired progeny," the Ambassador said faux-primly, as if Jim had been born yesterday. "Much less in this reality."

Jim tried to quirk an eyebrow, too, and obviously failed, but that didn't matter. He was still on drugs, anyway. "I'm adopting them," he stated, and left no room for argument.

The Ambassador's eyes crinkled, uninhibitedly. "And once again you exceed all my expectations, Jim, despite my expectations of you growing unwisely generous over the years. How have you found out?"

Jim raised both eyebrows. This he could do, no problem. "They got put on my ship. _Fourteen_ of them."

Somewhere to the left, in the bluish shadow, Jim's Spock let out a very quiet choking noise that brought an involuntary smile to Jim's lips. Maybe he should have discussed this adoption thing, but he was pissed off at Spock, and not in the mood to discuss anything, from acquisitioning VCE-members to on-the-fly plans for exposing xenophobic bigots. And look where it had got him? Into a hospital bed.

"That explains little," the Ambassador protested.

Jim soaked up the warmth of Spock's presence, perhaps two inches away from his left side, and stretched, feeling content despite the echoes of pain from his chest and elbow joint. "I'm sure," he agreed. "I'm sure none of them know who you are or even why you supported them so staunchly. Were you party to the decision to assign them to the Enterprise?"

The Ambassador blinked. It sufficed.

"Of course you were," Jim continued, never breaking their stare-off. "So far removed from the official hierarchy of the Starfleet Command, and still you influenced the assignments as easily as if you were an Admiral. More easily, even, I'd wager."

The old Spock put a hand on Jim's shoulder to make him shut up. It didn't really work. Besides, there were tons of misinformation about the Vulcans, but Jim had read Cantrell's thesis and he was fairly well acquainted with his Spock, so he knew that there was no mind-reading going on, but Spock's singular empathy would be able to pick up whatever he was feeling.

That was fine with him; he was feeling such a mixture of unidentifiable stuff that if this guy were able to make sense of it for him, he would be fine with it – it would be convenient.

"Friends can be found if one knows where to seek them," the old man replied half-cryptically, but it basically amounted to an admission anyway. It seemed that he had his fingers in many, many pies, and was an active force in the behind-the-curtains proceedings at Starfleet Command in addition to the Vulcan High Command and the Vulcan Embassy _and_ the Vulcan Colony. It was kind of attractive.

Jim hooked his left ring finger in the belt-loop of his Spock's uniform pants and grinned, imagining that one day this would be them – two old guys playing chess on the galactic 3-D chessboard. It was unlikely they would get there (Jim still hadn't found out how his counterpart had died, but he was pretty sure it was a case of boldly leaping against insurmountable odds and reality asserting itself for once), nonetheless it was a charming goal to work towards.

"And yet," Jim mused, idly brushing the knuckle of his ring finger against his Spock's hipbone, "you have resorted to working through a terrorist group. VCE, Ambassador?"

The old Vulcan affected a surprised expression; Jim's Spock raised an eyebrow at it, which was about all that needed to be said about it.

"They are hardly a terrorist group," the Ambassador admonished gently. Then he relented. "It is delightful to see that your brilliance remains a universal constant, my young friend. I would be interested in seeing _how_ you knew." He was repeating himself, so it seemed like hearing the answer was really important to him.

Jim hoped it was just a bluff; he didn't feel like answering the question and explaining his entire thought process to someone who was going to try and pull a fast one on him again soon enough. It was an indelible part of the one person who completed him, and he never would have wanted to live without it, but making it easy wasn't a part of the deal. It was about the challenge: Jim was all about the challenge and, when it came down to it, so was Spock.

"Perhaps," Jim replied, going for just enough coyness to make the statement ambiguous. "Or perhaps I'll keep a couple of aces up my shiny gold command shirt's sleeve, if you don't mind." He theatrically wiggled his unoccupied hand as though he was trying to shake the cards out of his sleeve – and that effect would have been so much better if he were wearing his uniform rather than a set of replicated pajamas and if his elbow didn't protest with the echo of considerable pain.

"Provided you shall keep your 'gold command shirt' in a wearable state and on your person," the Ambassador deadpanned.

Jim pouted. He wasn't that much of an exhibitionist. And, fine, maybe he preferred to exercise without the hassle of a sweaty t-shirt, but he was just a natural kind of guy.

Jim's Spock raised an enquiring eyebrow at his older counterpart, and received a squinty equivalent of 'that would be telling' in response. As if Jim couldn't read them, loud and clear.

And he wasn't going to let these two crafty bastards divert him completely. "I'm told these fourteen are less than a quarter of the Effort," he said. He withdrew his left hand to lace his fingers together; Spock Zero gave the minutest imaginable flinch in reaction to the loss of the point of contact, which was just too rejuvenating for words. "What do you plan on doing with the rest?"

"They shall complete their education and receive postings as befitting their individual skills."

Jim found that hard to believe. It practically vibrated at the frequency of 'Vulcan lie' – not a blatant untruth, but a misleading implication or a covert omission. "You do not have plans for them?"

He looked up, and the Ambassador's eyes glinted with humor and shrewdness, at the same time familiar and terribly alien. This was, Jim realized, Spock as he would never know him. A post-Jim-Kirk Spock. Torn up and hardened and yet capable of cherishing the very human parts of him more than he could have had cherished them without Jim's influence. There was something terribly tragic about the old half-Vulcan. Jim wished he could see less similarity between him and Jim's own Spock.

"Young people need to their space for self-actualization. If we try to stifle them, they will rebel, hurt themselves and others, or give in and waste their potential." The old man smiled at him, hard as diamond yet brittle and with a singular capacity for joy that bordered on insane. "But, Jim, they also need leadership, because in terms of wisdom and life experience they rarely constitute competition."

Jim shivered; he didn't argue when his Spock moved to adjust the climate controls. "You've been… more than subtle about the leadership. One might say… manipulative."

"How very nefarious of me, I am certain," the old man stated, and straightened, hands still preemptively joined behind his back, smile a blatant challenge.

"It is," Jim confirmed. "You stole Chekov." That had been a kick in the soft tissue. Actually, it had been the one moment when Jim had hesitated and reconsidered whether he wanted to go on playing this game with Ambassador Spock. Unfortunately, he had hardly ever managed to back down from a dare.

The old Vulcan raised an eyebrow. "I was not aware of that accomplishment. It was not intentional."

"Yeah, right." It might have been the truth, but it might have been old Spock's pseudo-foreknowledge about other-Chekov's thing for other-Pugacheva that had him sending the Cadet to Enterprise. Besides, the tilt of the Ambassador's mouth was nothing short of diabolical. "And you're absolutely not feeling self-satisfied over it."

"I will gladly give him back, Jim."

"You're… teasing me?" Jim blinked a couple of times before the idea penetrated. He had been getting into the spirit of competition – trust old Spock to pull the rug from under his metaphorical feet. They were back to the idea of family; to the fun kind of fondness. Jim grinned. "Oh, this is fantastic. That means _Spock_ will start teasing me one of these days!"

"I assure you, Captain," Spock's voice said from behind him, and no, Jim hadn't jumped a foot in the air, not _at all_, "that such an occurrence would have to be precipitated by an exceptional display of paucity of grace… and that, I am certain, shall not befall a Captain of Starfleet."

Jim tried and failed to scowl over his shoulder. His chest stung. Eventually, he turned back to face the Ambassador. "_He's_ teasing me."

They were going to be fine. They were going to be better than fine. Jim would heal himself and extract his head out of his ass and then go and heal their bond, because it was worth sweating blood if necessary. They were the best damn Command team in the 'fleet, and neither of them would die any time soon nor would give less than their all. Neither of them was a coward.

The old man inclined his head. "I do admit that our young friend is correct about the paucity of grace. Your display truly was exceptional, Jim."

"It's a conspiracy!" Jim choked out, and let the two of Chapel's minions on duty bustle the Spocks out. He received his next dose of the good stuff, administered far more gently than Bones would have done it, and went to sleep feeling like he had been stuffed with cotton candy.

x

Sobering up after a prolonged vacation on Bones' Elixir of Kirk-placidity made Jim achy and moody and bitchy – as coined by Yeoman Rand – who would have expected it of her? She had seemed like a demure and sweet girl in the beginning.

"It's the prolonged exposure to you, Captain," the girl explained when Jim complained about her personality shift.

No one gave him any breaks these days. Looked like people were still pissed off about the plan.

Except Spock. After that weird three-way encounter in the Sickbay, Spock wasn't being anything except _notably absent_. Jim was self-aware enough to accept it as a taste of his own medicine, even though he was pretty sure that had not been the intention on Spock's part. Spock wasn't that petty. Not even in the name of education.

"This is unreal," Jim grumbled, staring at the pile of administration on his desk in his Ready Room. "A docked ship can't amass this much paperwork in the time I was out of commission!"

"You wanna bet, Cap'n?" Scotty inquired uncompromisingly, and added two more datapads to one of the corner stacks, making it wobble dangerously. He seemed a bit peevish, but that might have been because Jim had ordered him to get rid of everything to do with the replicators during the refitting, and forbade the continuation of the project in the future.

"You left it for me on purpose."

"'course I did," Scotty replied, looking at Jim down his nose as if Jim was stupid for even considering another option.

Spock wouldn't have done that, Jim thought glumly. Then again, Spock wouldn't have held a grudge for being dragged out of the Engineering during the grease monkeys' Happy Hour on account of an unconscious Captain. That begged the question of why Jim's First Officer hadn't been there to take care of their ship.

He opened his mouth to ask where Spock was, but closed it again. He was supposed to know already. That he didn't know was embarrassing. Scotty would understand, because he was great like that, but Jim still didn't want to show his ignorance to the world.

"I thought you were overseeing the refitting," he pointed out instead. Because that was supposed to be Scotty's job, _not_ babysitting a docked ship.

"I was, up until three days ago, when the Commander shuttled to the surface with that other Vulcan. And now that you're here, Cap'n, I am on me way back to Engineering. Have a sandwich."

Ever practical, Scotty put a baguette on top of the precarious stack of PADDs and took his leave.

x

"Uhura… I know what you're going to say."

She put her hand on her hip and tilted her head to the side in a gesture blatantly mimicking Spock, which was just unfair. "Oh, you do, do you."

"It's not hard to figure out." Jim yawned and rubbed at his eyes. Honestly? He had spent a week sleeping off a couple of busted ribs. He should be running around in circles, overflowing with energy and driving his crew crazy, not falling asleep into paperwork.

Uhura scoffed; her mouth tightened and she pinned Jim with a scarily serious look. Serious like a sighted Klingon warbird. "I wish you actually listened to yourself right now, and learned something from it. But I know you won't. So I'll milk it for all the satisfaction I'm due."

Jim sighed. He did actually know what she was going to say to him. She had warned him in advance. "Alright, fine. Hit me."

"_I told you so_."

x

"Ensign Marie Brettschneider…?" Cupcake read from a datapad, comfortably sprawled in the chair opposite Jim. Nored sat next to him, contrastingly prim.

Jim tried to remember. Marie was fine, hadn't been injured enough for hospital, and had done an exemplary job subduing a threat to Jim's life. He had suggested her for a commendation.

Judging from Cupcake's expression, it hadn't been approved.

"Denied?" he asked, ready to dig his heels in and spam the brass with appeals.

Cupcake shook his head. "It hasn't been posted – Commander Spock returned it to you for reconsideration."

Nored shifted, but didn't say anything.

Jim took the PADD from Cupcake's hand. "He just doesn't like her, because she was in on the plan."

"Yes, well, Jim…" the man smirked at him, "_or_ he thought it would be denied because 'because she's awesome' is not a valid reason for issuing commendations to your crewmembers. You may try for more detail in your proposals."

Jim blinked. "That's… right. Crap. I was doing these last night," he waved his hand at the stack he had optimistically thought of as 'complete' and tried not to think about Spock, somewhere on the surface of the planet, still covering his back as diligently as ever. "By the time I finished with the requisitions I was a little out of it. A lot out of it. Possibly sleepwriting."

Cupcake snickered. "So, did you need us to keep you awake, or do you actually have something to discuss, Captain?"

Jim put aside the PADD he was holding and pulled closer the one on the desk in front of him. He had started writing, and then realized that he was missing too much of the details, and to get anything resembling a coherent report on last week's event, he needed the input of other people. Marie was on her shore leave, but she had submitted her report in writing while Jim was drugged to the gills, so he didn't disturb her well-deserved vacation.

"Yeah." Jim looked at what he had written. The last sentence was full of profanity aimed at the Academy Administrators, so he quickly erased it. "I'm stuck on the report. I know everyone says it was a shitty plan, but it wasn't actually as bad as it now seems. I just can't figure out where it's gone to shit."

"At the point when you and two security officers stood off against eleven attackers in the middle of Starfleet Academy campus, Captain," Nored replied placidly.

"Exactly! What's with that? We checked the security measures on campus – there are scanners that should detect phasers. There were supposed to be two guards posted at the Vulcan-Terran friendship statue, plus two more walking the circuit around the SimCentre. Where were they?!"

"We were supposed to have additional security," Cupcake agreed, "only half of those guys took _their_ side."

"I don't get that." Jim looked up through big, sad eyes, as if pleading with the world to explain why he had been betrayed by 'fleet people when he had always done his best as Captain, and took care of his ship and her crew.

Nored passed him a PADD with a colorful advertisement. "Because the assholes promised them lucrative posting on the Virgo Omicron Four terraforming project as reward, Captain. I'm told the Pelargis Colony is to be the new Monaco."

"Computer science expert with a grudge and connections…" Jim mused. It didn't make a whole lot of sense to him. When it came to vengeance, people tended to use methods that were closest to them – there were hundreds of ways they could have fucked with Jim by hacking something.

Unless they were incompetent computer guys, in which case it was possible that they would have tried to just shoot him. Their entire plan of ambushing him on the Academy grounds was pretty stupid, anyway-

"Actually," Cupcake spoke over Jim's contemplation, "those who attacked us were Chester's friends. Security track. The kind of guys…" He fell silent and frowned. "The kind of guys who amuse themselves by trawling the bars for someone to beat up."

Jim incredulously stared at the guy's guilty face. Then he burst into laughter.

Lieutenant Nored shook her head at the both of them and transferred a file from her personal datapad to the one in front of Jim. "There, Captain. The preliminary result of the investigation of the incident. Admiral Pike took care of it personally. Between him and Administrator Olson, it looks like an open-and-shut case."

Jim nodded at her, trying to quell the laugh. It ached a bit, but laughing felt _so good_.

Nored stood and snapped a salute. "Good luck at the hearing, Captain. I would recommend you attempt to actually rest tonight."

That helped Jim stop laughing. Like an ice planet to the face. A hearing? Already tomorrow?

"I'm sure it will be fine, Captain," Cupcake placated him. "You are experienced at this sort of thing, aren't you? Hardly your first disciplinary committee…"

Jim groaned and suppressed the urge to crawl under the desk and hide there until the day after tomorrow. And Cupcake's amusement was just a cherry on top.

Jim's people were the best – but apparently they were _all_ snarky assholes.

x

Jim couldn't for the life of him fall asleep that night.

It was like that time he had been sitting behind the bars of a dingy, poorly insulated little cell and couldn't stop grinning at his captors, because he had kept thinking 'Spock's going to fuck your shit up'. Those guys had ended up thinking he was _non compos mentis_ and gave him back for fear of angering their local god of loonies or something.

Spock's right eyebrow remained out of alignment with the left one for nearly a week afterwards.

Good times.

When he woke up from a light slumber for the fourth time, he gave up on it and turned on his terminal. He hacked Pike's account, read through the preliminary report about the 'incident', and found that during interrogation the cadets had called Spock and him several interesting things, starting with 'lever' and ending with stuff that would have been asterisked out in any mainstream media, if they ever got their grubby paws on this material.

He pulled up a form for registered partnerships, filled it for him and Spock, and saved it without posting; he might have gotten away with faking Spock's signature to the brass, be he wouldn't have gotten away with it to Spock, and some things were worth doing right.

Coming out to the world at large was one of them. Getting officially married was another.

x

The news about the hearing must not have leaked out, because there was no media siege around the building, and Jim managed to get inside – surrounded by a squad of Cupcake clones (it seemed that Cupcake had access to Chapel's hidden lab, and was conducting similar experiments) technically led by Nored, because his red-shirts were sure that without creating a wall of flesh around him, Jim was going to be shot en route.

Absurd, but they refused to argue with him and won the debate through sheer numbers.

Jim took it with no grace at all. He suspected Spock would have teased him about it, only Spock was still nowhere around. That was Jim's own fault, for being a dick.

On the other hand, the hall was packed – the fight in the T'Plana-Hath Park had not been inconspicuous, and the rumors of Captain Kirk getting shot must have made rounds among the cadets. It was a sea of red inside. The front line of the audience was, interestingly, full of familiar faces: Chekov, Pugacheva, Sanchez, Brent, Kovac, Barrows… even Rum, who technically wasn't a part of their group. Breena Fitzpatrick and Connor O'Donnell. They were surrounded by unfamiliar faces, most of whom, Jim was fairly sure, were the as-yet unidentified members of the VCE.

He didn't believe there wasn't a plan in the works for them, too. He would have to ask the Ambassador again if he had the chance.

"Silence!" a thin-faced woman yelled over the din, and within a few seconds the rustle and chatter stopped.

Jim drew himself taller, straighter, shoulders back and chin up, looking around himself with the self-assurance of the Captain of the Flagship. Cupcake's people took posts at strategic points throughout the room; Cupcake himself stood behind Jim like a hulking red-and-black shadow.

"Cadet David Christian Chester," the woman spoke, almost Vulcan in her lack of inflection, "you stand accused of two counts of hate-motivated assault of a superior officer, three counts of assault of a superior officer with a deadly weapon, two counts of conspiracy to commit a crime-"

While she continued enumerating, progressing from the really big and flashy crimes to the misdemeanors, Jim watched the Cadet himself. He was glaring, in turns at Jim, at the Administrator, the committee, and at his companions – aside from Blonsky, there were ten other people standing on that side of the room, and most of them did not look like they had been caught red-handed and couldn't expect to get out of this bind. In fact, most of them were scowling and throwing around hateful glances themselves.

"-how do you plead?" the woman finished.

"Not guilty," Chester replied automatically.

A murmur swept over the audience; even a few members of the committee itself were surprised at the brazenness. Cupcake shook his head in disbelief.

The woman swept her finger along the screen of her PADD and spoke again: "Cadet Alexander Blonsky, you stand accused-"

It was basically a repetition of Chester's list, only with the addition of corruption in the ranks. Jim tried to find Commander Cavanaugh it the crowd; either she was hiding well, or she was not present.

The Administrator went through the rest of the accused and then called for Administrator Olson to present the evidence, which, considering security cameras on campus, was pretty damning. Someone – Jim suspected Chekov, who was looking uncharacteristically bloodthirsty despite Pugacheva's hand on the back of his neck – had provided feeds from the Enterprise, too, and at that point the whole group could kiss their career in Starfleet goodbye, and the hearing became for them a matter of staying out of prison.

"You know…" Jim said when the Administrator – Milena Nevska, according to her Starfleet Eyeseen bio – called for recess an hour and half later, and Bones stormed in, on the verge of drawing a hypo, "I had been arrested a few times-" a few dozen times, he mentally amended, "-when I was young. I used to go up to the mirror glass and studiously pick my nose."

"Goddamnit, Jim!" Bones sank onto a bench reserved for witnesses, "Now you're gonna tell me you did that to the brass when they were picking your brain about the Catulla situation."

"Oi! I did not." Jim stole a water bottle from Bones' bag and gulped down half of it. "Alright. So, I got up and walked to the mirror, but then I did nothing, because I remembered that now I am a Starship Captain and Starship Captains _do not do that_. Takes all fun out of a life."

Bones stole the bottle back –actually, he took it from Jim's hand when Jim offered it back to him – rolling his eyes. "Yeah, you're endlessly bored with your boring ship and your boring pointy-eared life partner."

Jim pouted. Spock didn't need defending – everyone and their pet tribble knew there wasn't a non-interesting bone in his body – but Spock also wasn't here, and Jim was feeling oddly upended by the absence. It was different when one of them was on a planet and the other on the ship, even when an ion storm or gamma radiation or a weird concentration of minerals disrupted their comms; it was the missing certainty that 'Spock was on the case'.

No wonder he couldn't fall asleep last night.

He would never admit it, but Bones was right – Jim and Spock were codependent. It was annoying.

It was even more annoying when Spock walked into the hall five minutes later, just before Administrator Nevska called the meeting to order and invited the defence to speak. Spock stood at parade rest on opposite side of Jim to Bones, where Cupcake had graciously made space for him.

"I apologize for my tardiness, Captain," Spock said quietly under the defence attorney's speech, which was made half of empty rhetoric and half of impassioned counter-accusations against the crew of Enterprise. "I was unavoidably detained."

"I bet," Bones grumbled, as was practically compulsory for him.

Jim glanced up at Dana Olson instead of rolling his eyes. "I believe the case is pretty solid, Mr Spock, but your support is welcome." He hadn't meant for it to sound sarcastic; it just came out that way.

Spock too glanced up at the line of men and women listening to the defence bullshit with skeptical expressions. Since Vulcans never rolled their eyes.

"They will call in question your handling of the assassination attempt on Catulla," Spock warned.

Bones cursed. "Just don't lose your temper, kid."

Spock raised his eyebrow, passing wordless judgment on Bones' lack of faith in Jim.

Catulla wasn't bad by the standards of a flagship, but it was bad for Jim personally, because he felt that he should have been able to prevent it. Spock had let him try and explain it, which served to prove to Jim that there was no explanation, and Jim had come to terms with the fact that, sometimes, he would lose crewmembers.

"I wish I struggled more with those decisions," Jim noted, watching as the declaiming attorney became progressively redder in the face and more impassioned, while the committee looked gradually more disbelieving or downright disgusted. He wanted to laugh. "I wish I were a better person."

Spock tilted his head to the side. "Your ability to make rational decisions rather than ones fuelled by sentiment and idealism is a strength. It can never be a failure, and only one who has never accepted the responsibility for others' lives could ever speak out against it."

Nevska shot them a strict frown from her elevated seat, and Jim swallowed down his response. They watched the defence try very, very hard to squeeze water from chalk and fail – but fail in such a way that he indisputably deserved his fees.

"What we have here, then," said an Andorian from the very edge of the committee sarcastically, "is a group of poor, misunderstood young beings, whose xenophobia is not their fault. They are essentially a support group that meets in drinking establishments to help one another come to terms with the fact that the rest of the Federation does not share their opinions, and they accomplish this through enabling their mutual drinking habit and sharing plans of committing violence upon commissioned officers of the Starfleet. Did I understand you correctly, Mr Smythe?"

"Objection!" the defence attorney exclaimed.

"Sustained," agreed Administrator Nevska, but the damage was already done.

"The assault was clearly provoked!" Smythe tried, clinging to a last hope.

"By the Captain and the First Officer walking together down a corridor?" inquired a probably-Terran woman sitting next to the Andorian.

Muffled laughter came from the audience, and Administrator Nevska had to call for order again.

"By blatantly flaunting the anti-fraternization regulations!" Smythe retorted.

Jim gritted his teeth. There it was. If the assholes had to go down, they were damn sure going to do their level best to drag Spock and Jim down with them. He had hoped that their best would be laughable. It wasn't.

He had a brief, unfair thought, that he should have faked Spock's signature and filed the bond-related documentation anyway.

Before he could formulate anything to say, Spock stepped forward and addressed Nevska. "May I speak, Administrator?"

"Go ahead, Commander," she replied, far better at hiding exasperation than curiosity.

Spock joined his hands behind his back and, impossibly, pulled himself yet straighter. "Your Honors," he said, "the accusation of fraternization does indeed necessitate an investigation. In the interest of full disclosure, the document numbered dee-eff-eff dash twenty-two, sixty-one dash nine-oh-one-seven is at your disposal."

Jim gaped. He got punched into the shoulder – by Bones – and figuratively collected his jaw, briefly considered feeling betrayed, gave that up as petty and then it became a struggle to not laugh at himself. Here he was, arguing with himself about the wrongness of faking Spock's signature on a marriage contract; and there was Spock, logicking his way through the dilemma to the relevant points and filing the documents on the sly. Faking Jim's signature.

And Jim couldn't, for the life of him, feel betrayed. Not even the slightest bit. Even though the childish part of him wanted to feel hurt.

This was typical Spock. Pragmatic. Efficient. Dependable. Doing his job as First Officer, and doing it damn well.

The officials reviewed the indicated file; Jim could see the instance when Smythe gave in entirely. Unfortunately, he could not keep from hearing the squealing and the fairly explicit speculation coming from the red mass of cadets. He could have lived his entire life without ever hearing the phrase 'hide the beanstalk' used in reference to him.


	10. Chapter Seven: Bile

Chapter Seven: Bile

x

The hearing was closed soon after. The committee unanimously approved the case for a martial court, the date of which was to be determined. The twelve accused were remanded into the hands of designated Starfleet Security Officers, and the audience was asked to leave and attend to their academic pursuits.

Jim lingered, waiting for the hall to empty.

Spock used the opportunity to inch close enough to almost encroach upon Jim's personal bubble and impart: "Since the information will become publically available upon being confirmed by the Admiralty, I took the liberty of formally notifying my Father." He paused, most likely to gauge Jim's reaction, which for the moment was basically instinctual numb terror that he had no intention to outwardly display. "He wishes to speak with you."

Bones snorted. "Finally meeting the in-laws, kid, huh?"

Jim wondered whether he should inform the man that, technically, Sarek was Bones' in-law, too, but decided to refrain for a slew of reasons, starting with the fact that they were in a public venue and Bones' reaction was bound to be loud, moving on to the fact that he didn't want Bones to head straight for the good liquor, and accounting for the very real worry that Bones might decide to milk it for what it was worth and offer Sarek all sorts of mortifying details in revenge. For all their sakes, Jim let his friend go on in blithe ignorance.

Spock raised an eyebrow at him, following a similar train of thought, with the added trauma of genuine horror at the idea of being indirectly married to Bones.

"Lead the way," Jim bade him once the exits had cleared.

He couldn't say he was happy about the development, but being polite to his partner's parent was basic courtesy, so Jim fell in stride at Spock's side and walked with him toward the T'Plana-Hath Park (which might or might not have been Spock's pithy comment on Jim's life choices). Bones split from them at the first waft of the smell of cafeteria in the air, and Jim enviously glared at his departing back.

They met the rest of their makeshift family unit by the Friendship Fountain. Sarek stood ramrod straight; Ambassador Spock next to him appeared downright relaxed.

"_Sa-mekh_," Spock spoke formally, "I present my bond-mate, James Kirk, Captain of the Federation Flagship Enterprise."

Since it was obviously some kind of traditional procedure, Jim split his fingers in a ta'al and after a brief consideration decided to not even attempt to fake a smile.

Sarek didn't show much of a reaction beyond a nod of greeting and a ta'al of his own. It wasn't like he and Jim hadn't spoken in the past and, judging by the utterly unconcerned demeanor of the old Spock, the personal relationship between the Captain and the First Officer had been at the very least hinted at before.

"So," Jim asked when it seemed that the official part of the powwow was over, "what's your beef with Ester Cavanaugh?"

Sarek incredulously mouthed 'beef', exasperated with colloquial Terran Standard, but Ambassador Spock didn't even pause. "I have concluded that she is one of the culprits behind the dissolution and criminalization of the VCE."

"I see." Jim wondered if she had been reported missing already, and what it must have been like to fall into a vat of corrosive hydraulic piston lubrication. "What about the other culprits? Any tragic fatal accidents?"

The old Vulcan gave him an admonishing look. "Do you believe me so callous, Jim?"

Yes. Yes, Jim absolutely did believe this man capable of great and terrible things, if he was properly motivated. Ambassador Spock might have stood for pacifism and respect for all forms of life, but all bets were off the instance something – or someone – that belonged to Spock were threatened.

"Take one life, save hundred," Jim replied very quietly.

The old Spock blinked at him, slowly – which Jim had come to suspect was what he did when he compared Jim to the other Jim.

"It will be interesting to see what shall become of the Enterprise without the temperance of James Kirk's singular capacity for mercy." The Ambassador gripped Jim's upper arm, uncomfortably tightly, and then let go. It, maybe, made his speculation sound a little like a threat.

"The needs of the many," Jim replied, unison with his own Spock, who had unexpectedly become a part of the conversation at possibly the most inconvenient moment possible.

"It is, indeed, a basic tenet of Vulcan ethics," the old Spock allowed with audible distaste.

"Vulcan ethics." Jim clenched his jaw, thinking of six months ago, when the Vulcan Colony had advised Spock that he needn't bother making the trip, because there would be no one willing to help him through the _pon farr_. "That's an oxymoron." Funny how neither of the Ambassadors had done anything then. Maybe this was the time-traveler's meddling – a sink-or-swim method of forcing Jim and Spock to bond.

_Ethics_ his ass.

"Vulcans preach IDIC but engender xenophobia," he continued, because once he had started poking a hornets' nest he might as well get a good kick in. "They're sanctimonious racist pricks – no offence to present parties."

"Captain-"

"Spock," Jim turned to his First Officer, "you have yourself learnt at an early age that Vulcan logic does not preclude cruelty, even cruelty for entertainment's sake." He wasn't going to talk about the genetic-dead-end rejection unless necessary, but Spock's history was practically a continuous illustration of Jim's point.

"That, Captain, is a thoughtless generalization based on singular anecdotal evidence."

Jim opened his mouth to say that Spock's mother had faced _decades_ of ostracism from the alleged cream of Vulcan society, but then he closed it again. It was another valid point, and it might have won him the argument, but Jim had misused Amanda Grayson's name for several lifetimes in advance, so that wasn't going to happen.

Spock clasped his hands behind his back and raised his chin. His eyes were clouded.

Basically, to everyone else it would have looked like Spock had squarely won the debate, but both Spock and Jim knew that Jim had come out the clear victor, and Spock had not ever had a chance on defending his point of view.

"A blanket dismissal of a sentient race as inferior is illogical," Spock said eventually, and while it sounded like he was denying that his people had ever held that opinion, Jim took that as Spock distancing himself from that philosophy.

Jim extended his hand and settled his palm against Spock's shoulder blade. The connection was ephemeral but, he hoped, sufficient to relay his chagrin at the unfortunate topic and his gratefulness for Spock's improved state of mind. This wasn't how he had wanted to restore his relationship with his bond-mate.

Spock moved out of his reach.

Jim retracted his hand and promptly stuck it into his pocket, because otherwise he would have ended up clenching his fist. It must have been a special talent, how he always managed to fuck up.

So, there was that thing Jim did. That thing, where he felt like he was losing, and he was such a sore loser, there was nothing funny about it. A lion with a thorn in its paw was a purring kitten compared to him when he gave up control of his mouth and turned on the obnoxiousness for real.

The crew didn't know what to do with him when he was in a mood, but he was getting better about not letting it interfere with his duties.

Sadly, he couldn't seem to keep it out of his marriages. Bones hated him when he was like this. That was, actually, where the whole thing with hypo-ing Jim into submission had started. And Spock… well, Spock was possibly worse when it came to the passive-aggressiveness than Jim himself. It took a lot to penetrate the Vulcan shields, and yet more to properly tick the man off, but once Spock got there… well, Jim still vividly recalled what it felt like to have those fingers wrapped around his throat and squeezing.

Unfortunately, even that recollection wasn't enough to stop him from turning to Ambassador Sarek and remarking: "He's a stubborn prick."

Sarek went a little green around the gills.

"Second only to your own obstinacy," Ambassador Spock pointed out easily, with the aplomb of a man who had dealt with a Jim Kirk for a lifetime. It was a little humbling to see how he could bitch-slap Jim with a single well-aimed sentence.

"Of course we are," Jim retorted. "A match made in Hell-"

"But worth every possible unpleasantness-"

"Or so you tell me." Jim crossed his arms in front of his chest and gritted his teeth when he saw the tightening around the old Spock's eyes. That was a non-eye-roll, right there.

Jim had thought he had grown up more than this. He felt hideously young.

He closed his eyes for a moment, recalled to mind that he was the Captain of the Enterprise and what it meant. He wasn't standing here with two family members – he was an officer in the presence of two foreign diplomats. He should probably apologize for his utterly _forthright_ display of irritation, but whatever he might have said now would have sounded contrived.

Instead he let his hands down, shifted his stance, and turned to the two older Vulcans with an expression that, he knew, resembled serenity. "By the way, did you figure out a solution to the _othuash_ problem?"

"Indeed," the old Spock replied. "There is a blend of several herbs that has remarkably similar effects. Dr Cantrell is publishing an article on the topic within the month, but circumstances being what they are, I will have the details sent to your account, Jim."

"Thank you, Ambassadors." Jim smirked at his Spock. "See? Now you can stop experimenting on yourself."

The look Spock returned was unexpectedly dark. They had too much to talk about, to deal with, but it was all private, and misdirecting the hurt into mutual anger would help nothing. Jim knew it, Spock knew it, and it seemed like it should have been really easy at that moment to just refrain from getting into an argument. But it wasn't. Jim wished he were better at compartmentalizing.

"Indeed, Captain," Spock said, with tolerance that humbled Jim.

"It has been gratifying to see that my son has found a bond-mate that suits him so well," Sarek stated so dryly that it took Jim a while to catch onto the sarcasm.

He might have gaped a bit.

Then he figured that this was Spock's Father, and all the magnificence had to have come from somewhere. Miss Grayson had been pretty amazing in her own right, so it stood to reason that she would have gotten together with someone just as special. And since their son was, in Jim's not-so-humble opinion, the best thing since the warp drive, _quod erat demonstrandum_.

Spock took the dryness as a challenge, turning to Jim as the easiest available target. "Would that your other husband were as congenial a companion. Unfortunately, my relationship with Dr McCoy remains invariantly contentious – although I must admit that I find his propensity for passion arresting."

Jim at least had a good idea of what the actual relationship between Bones and Spock was like, so he just choked and then stuffed all the emerging, half-formed images back into the darkest recesses of his mind.

Sarek was not so fortunate.

Much to Jim's shock, old Spock also looked like he had swallowed a lemon.

"I…" Sarek paused, eyes moving from the other Ambassador to Jim to Sarek's son, "must meditate. Please, excuse me." Limiting himself to a perfunctory greeting, the Vulcan turned on his heel and walked at a steady pace down the path toward the campus gates and the parking lot.

Jim saw the glint in Spock's eyes, which, yes, Spock was capable of greater than moderate evil for the sake of his personal amusement. It was very attractive.

"What?" Jim faux-innocently inquired of the remaining Ambassador. "Was I never married in your timeline?"

The old Spock looked ever-so-slightly down at him and raised an eyebrow. "…not to Doctor McCoy." He still seemed disconcerted, but now the shock was abating and amusement set in.

Jim refused to speculate on his potential partners. He couldn't imagine marrying – actually for real marrying – joint account, death do them part– anyone else. Maybe in a reality where his father had survived to see him become a cookie-cutter starship captain, his approach to romantic relationships was different, but he wasn't interested in hearing about it.

"I believe," Jim's First Officer opined, "that the relevant cliché in this case would be 'you are unaware of what you are missing'."

There was the lemon-swallowing face again.

Spock may not have invented trolling, but he certainly raised it to an art form.

On the other hand, Spock wouldn't have been inclined to making fun, however malicious, if he had been truly angry or hurt. Jim realized that he didn't have a clue what was going through his bond-mate's head, and that made him angry at himself.

He should have known. They had been friends for years and literally sharing mind-space for over six months, and Jim was such a sorry bastard that he hadn't let Spock in. And he had promised – he had meant the promise when he had made it.

It got shoved aside somewhere along the way. There were missions – running for their lives and diplomatic near-disasters and even the odd space battle with the newly arisen organization of dissatisfied Romulans that had decided to take on Nero's mission in the aftermath of Narada. Jim had delighted in exposing them and blasting a few of them out of the night sky, even though a loss of life shouldn't have brought him satisfaction.

It was easier to kill when it wasn't personal.

It was easier to be married when it wasn't personal.

Jim was such a fucking asshole.

And Bones was there to save him once again. Jim had no damn clue what he would have done without Bones, and he had never, for a single second, regretted signing on the dotted line for him. This guy was one of the best things that had ever happened to him; without him Jim wouldn't have lived long enough to even meet Spock. Seeing the gruff, grumbling bear approach now made Jim quietly joyful on the inside.

Especially since Bones carried a bag of sandwiches in the crook of his arm and went straight for Jim, as though he suspected that Jim hadn't eaten anything since the apple he had had for dinner yesterday.

"Heeey, hubby!" Jim cheered, and attached himself to the medicine man's free arm like a Captain-shaped barnacle.

Bones glared at Spock Zero and through clenched teeth demanded: "Get him off me."

"This is yet another unfamiliar dynamic," the Ambassador remarked.

Bones gave him the hairiest eyeball, scowled some more at nothing and everything, and deftly manhandled Jim so that he could press a palm to his forehead. Then he caught Jim's wrist, palpated for the pulse and counted.

The scowl didn't abate when Jim didn't make even a token protest against the treatment.

Jim didn't protest, because Bones was warm and solid and there, and maybe Jim needed someone to be warm and solid and there at the moment.

"I don't like this," the grump grumbled. "I'm taking you to the Sickbay."

Jim cast a thoughtful look at two of the three Vulcans that – aside from Bones – were apparently his whole family, and felt… tired. He nodded.

Unfortunately, this had the side-effect of scaring Bones yet more.

x

The hypo wore off in the middle of the night. Jim woke up in his cabin, because Bones cared enough for him to stab him in privacy rather than in the middle of the Sickbay, when he had the luxury of choice.

Jim lay on his bed and stared into the near-darkness, recreating familiar melodies in his head, then equations, reciting the list of Enterprise's missions since he was granted captaincy, and eventually surrendered to the unquenchable need to sort out his… _feelings_.

He made a few surprising discoveries when he allowed himself to think on it.

One was that he would be capable of terrible (_genocide level terrible_) deeds for Spock. It was worse coming from him, because he had been there for a genocide. He had been a witness and a victim of it – indirectly, but in a way that shaped the rest of his life. This resolve, coming from him, was a moment of blank sociopathy, and Spock would have hated it if he ever found out he could inspire it.

Maybe not the old Spock. He kind of seemed like he knew.

Another surprise was the level of abstraction on which their relationship had been happening. There was little to nothing mundane to it. It pretty much consisted of life-or-death decisions, mortal combat, edge-of-a-blade negotiations, philosophy, chess and sex.

Which led directly to the most surprising of Jim's finds.

Figuring out the sex had been painful and jarring, because it started when Spock had gone from irrational to insane to completely incommunicative, gripped by the instinct to dominate and propagate to the exclusion of all else. Jim had survived with minimal trauma only by dint of his many and varied past sexual conquests. Once a guy had ventured outside the humanoid sphere, there was nothing shocking about the biological differences between Vulcans and humans.

The rape-y feel of the whole thing had not been so hot, but Jim had not been given a lot of time to agonize over it. Between the exhaustion and the orgasms, he was pumped up to his eyeballs with endorphins (and that idiom lost something when he realized just where his brain was located in relation to his eyes) or sleeping most of the time. What little else he remembered had been suffused with the alien-turned-familiar presence of Spock's mind. Not a sustained meld; more like a dissolution of shields. An osmosis of psyches.

Jim had no clear memories of the _pon farr_, but he had come out of the experience surreally adapted to being Spock's bond-mate.

Or so he had thought.

And he hadn't been the only one thinking so, judging by the way Bones had kept quietly freaking out every time Jim had done something wildly out of character for him. Like acting polite to Komack (it was still acting, but now Jim could be persuasive about it, which Bones hadn't expected). Or toning his obnoxious flirting down to friendly flirting (now that Jim had seen himself through another's eyes, he decided that he might as well strive to keep some dignity, as befitting the inherent _gravitas_ of Captaincy). Or… well, that time the science gals from Lindstrom's lab dared him to the cultural equivalent of a panty raid on Cait, and he had refused because… well, because Spock's borderline pathological respect for people's cultural practices was rubbing off on him?

Jim could guess how it stemmed from being the child of an interplanetary Ambassador and his wife, who was a different species and a pioneer of peaceful intercultural exchange, and it was compounded by the relentless bullying Spock had endured as a child to the point that he had made one of his theses on Interspecies Ethics and went on to teach the class at the Starfleet Academy… but Spock did Jim the courtesy of not psychoanalyzing him, so Jim resolved to return it and just take Spock as he was.

Too bad that he apparently had not gotten to know Spock as well as he should have.

But he wanted to. That counted for something, surely? And maybe it was long overdue, but better late than never, right?

x

Jim dressed and appeared on the Bridge in time for Alpha shift, and it only occurred to him that he was technically doubly off the roster (vacation time and medical leave) when he found Sulu splayed in the Captain's armchair and idly listening to an audiobook in Japanese.

Sulu flinched when he noticed Jim's presence. He moved to somersault out the chair and Jim quickly gestured him to remain where he was – it wasn't like Jim was big on ceremony even when people were watching.

"Good to see you up and about, Captain," the pilot said with an easy grin, pausing the recording. "Heard you kicked ass yesterday."

For all of Jim's planning, risk-taking, effort and near-fatal wounds, the one to kick any ass yesterday had been Spock.

"I don't suppose there's anything that needs doing here?" Jim inquired, knowing the answer would be negative. The Bridge of a docked spaceship was a surprisingly boring place.

Sulu shrugged. "I play a mean game of battleship…?"

Jim tried his damnedest to smile and left the pilot to his book. With most of the crew on shore leave and the rest concentrated in Engineering, the Enterprise had become a ghost town. Corridors were empty and quiet, illumination reduced to emergency lighting on vacant decks; Jefferies tubes that usually conducted echoes of activity and speech remained conspicuously silent.

Under the oppressive weight of solitude, Jim made a nearly unprecedented decision and voluntarily went to the Sickbay. The turbolift door slid open to reveal Spock, who looked as surprised as Jim felt.

"Captain," Spock said.

Jim stiffened, body subconsciously drawing into parade rest, before he consciously took it over again; nevertheless, any chance of appearing to be literally at ease, rather than the military equivalent, was lost. Without the shield of professionalism he felt uncomfortably exposed. Vulnerable.

In retrospect, he was proud of himself (and a little of Spock, too, but with Spock that kind of thing was a given) for how well he has comported himself over the past few days. Their friends had sensed that, for once, the tension in the command team wasn't entirely of the titillating quality, but in the eyes of strangers they presented a united front. It was good to know that he was capable of that kind of thing. Putting his duties first. Rising above his own shit.

Has he finally become a real boy? Jim needed to ask Bones; Bones could riddle him that.

"I have confirmed the finalized roster of Medical personnel with Dr McCoy," Spock offered when the silence stretched from awkward to excruciating. "I will upload the files to the ship computer from my personal terminal."

Jim wanted to hear the rest, but no more words were forthcoming. Spock moved slightly to the side, despite the fact that the entrance was wide enough that they could comfortably pass one another, and pointedly waited for Jim to exit the lift.

Jim complied. "All yours, Commander," he said with a pale imitation of humor, taking care to not touch Spock as he passed him, since the man had made it obvious he would resent it. Their eyes met very briefly, and Jim took note of the dark circles under Spock's. "Take the opportunity to actually rest, Mr Spock. Service as exemplary as yours is exhausting, and I would hate to see you spend our entire downtime cleaning up my messes."

"Jim…" Spock exhaled deeply. "It is gratifying to see you well. May I extend the same caution to you?"

Jim nodded in acceptance of the concern. He was still not back to hundred percent health-wise, but he was at that point when Bones stopped griping about it, so he considered himself recovered. He looked like replicated shit because he hadn't slept well – and he hadn't slept well because the specter of his guilty conscience kept following him around his subconscious and whispering to him about the way he had treated his partner.

When he looked up, he found Spock standing in the turbolift door and scrutinizing him with concerned interest. In that instance, Jim wanted nothing more than to move back and be welcome into Spock's arms, just to lean against him for a while and absorb some sense of stability.

But Spock might as well been hewn from marble for all the welcome he radiated. He would not be inclined to hugging in the least, much less in a place where the display of affection could be witnessed. It was one thing to file a marriage contract for the public's perusal; hugging was an entirely different league.

Jim's shoulders dropped.

Spock's concern intensified.

On another day, Jim would blunder through Spock's defenses and ask for what he wanted, ready to present logical and faux-logical arguments for why things should be given to him and concessions be made for him. Sometimes he by-passed the talking entirely, and went straight to the taking. But not through stop signs – never through stop signs. It was tough trying to consolidate their expectations, and just surrendering to one another's wants was easier, but not right, and ultimately not as fulfilling as fighting that battle and coming out bruised but richer for it.

Unfortunately, today Jim just didn't have the energy and mental and emotional fortitude to combat the resistance, so he gave up – he backed down when he needed the contact most.

"I'm just drained – as you have observed."

"You are _unhappy_," Spock corrected, worry and frustration telegraphed in the vestigial lines around his eyes and mouth.

Jim shrugged. "I'm going to bug Bones. Have a _pleasant period of rest_, Mr Spock."

x

"Aw, Hell to the naw!" Bones exclaimed the moment he clamped eyes on Jim.

Then he put his work down, locked the door and utilized a terrifying combination of his best weapons – alcohol, the threat of hypos and the stare of a repeatedly kicked starved dog – to get the whole dumb story out of Jim with embarrassing ease.

"Easiest thing you've ever done _my ass_," the doctor complained as he poured himself a third glass.

Jim was still nursing his first, because his friend had warned him beforehand that it was the only one he would get _and meant it_. The wisdom of moderation was so obvious that Jim didn't waste energy arguing. He sipped incrementally, relished the slow burn that oozed down his insides and talked.

"It's easy, when it takes all the choices right out of my hands and leaves me with a 'yes or no' question." When it came down to a decision between Jim's commitment phobia or Spock, there wasn't any bellyaching about which was more important. "But I've wised up to that, and now I've got the option to just not let that happen, and keep my choices. And I wanted to touch him, but I didn't want to, because then he'd know. And it was easier to just leave."

Bones, perhaps owing to the alcohol, but more likely just due to prolonged close acquaintance with Jim, managed to follow that train of thought. He looked up – if he had been wearing glasses, he would have been looking over them, not so much judgmental or condescending as simply certain that he knew better. "But it's not easier now, is it?"

"I know!" Jim snapped.

His friend could tell him a thousand times that he was 'not that kind of a doctor' but Jim would never take him seriously, because Bones went and did shit like this. Just looked into people or through them, peeled them down to the core parts, reduced them to what was important, and put their problems into perspective with the aplomb of a true cynical altruist.

"I know what you're saying, Bones. And it's not about me being a coward, I swear it's not. I just…"

When he had definitively decided that he was going to bond with Spock, a sense of finality had come over him, and it had felt good. So good. A lot of existential worry had fallen away of him – now he barely remembered that part, because after the _pon farr_ he wasn't entirely the same person as he had been before.

In a sense, he realized (far too late and embarrassed by how obvious the whole thing seemed in hindsight), he was only just regaining himself – re-becoming the person he had been when he had been an individual, prior to the bonding.

Maybe this was healthy. Maybe it was normal, or maybe it was a side-effect of being a human telepathically tied to a Vulcan, but it wasn't a bad thing. The process was difficult, often painful and made unnecessarily more uncomfortable by Jim's ignorance of what he should expect, but he would still rather be himself than some odd Spock-infected semblance of Jim Kirk.

He sighed into his half-empty glass. "I wanted this to be indefectible. I don't know why. I mean, obviously, that's stupid. It would be boring if it was perfect. But I just realised that I was fucking up, and the only way to make it right was to come clean and…"

"He knows you," Bones filled in.

It wasn't what Jim had been thinking, but it was indisputably correct.

"I know." It wasn't necessarily an advantage. The better people got to know Jim, the more of the not-nice submerged nine-tenths of the glacier of his personality they got to see.

Bones rolled his eyes, took a deep breath to brace himself and, with almost comical discomfort, mumbled: "He… you know."

"I know," Jim replied, crows' feet emerging in an unrealized smile. "Bones… I know. And despite that I'm not there. I'm here."

"Who's surprised?" The doctor shook his head. "Not me, kid, you can bet. In your vocabulary, 'intimacy' is a profanity."

Jim tilted his head to the side, contemplated for a while, and then concluded: "I'm probably fucked up, it seems like."

Bones snorted. "Jesus, kid. You don't say."


	11. Chapter Eight: Plomeek

Chapter Eight: Plomeek

x

"So," Jim said, walking through the door of Spock's cabin like nothing particularly odd had occurred in the days past, "there's this thing that I do-"

Then he realized that the cabin was empty. Spock was not there.

More worryingly, Jim would have to gather up the resolve to present his case and ask for forgiveness once again. Which sucked. Relationships were horribly stressful. More stressful than running a Constitution class starship, in Jim's opinion.

Maybe he should just cheat and ask Spock for a mind-meld. It was easier to be sincere, to be genuine, when they were touching synapses-to-synapses. It… oddly, it made Jim feel less hideous on the inside.

Robbed of his momentum, Jim briefly hesitated and then sank onto the bed. It had been made, naturally. The yeomen had been by, but Jim knew that Spock usually made his own bed anyway, driven by years upon years of parenting, training, habit and his own (mildly OCD) need for neatness. Jim had bit his tongue a few times before he had almost called the man a neat-freak, and with time realized that he wouldn't have been right anyway. Spock wasn't a freak.

Well, yes, he was, but in a good way. He was interesting-weird, even _fascinating_-weird, as opposed to the left-side-of-weird people that Jim definitely didn't feel so pulled towards. He was a fan of hygiene – which Jim absolutely agreed with – and liked to have a thorough idea of his surroundings. He needed a mixture of familiar and novel to be content, and he was anxious about social contact because we was hyperaware of his inability to catch some of human social cues, and that made most people treat him like an Asperger at best.

He was a dragon about incorrect spelling. He had been known to demand rewrites of reports due to subpar use of language.

And he hated, abhorred – would have rather recited awful Klingon poetry before he admitted it, but he did – he absolutely _detested_ artificial strawberry flavor. The only true rant Jim had ever witnessed from Spock (when there were no mind-altering substances or events involved) had concerned fake strawberry flavoring. It had been earth-shattering. Not literally, because they hadn't even been on Earth, not planet-side at all, but Jim had thought he would bust something. It was the funniest thing that had ever happened to him.

It was…

"I'm an idiot," he said, surprised. He occasionally made this proclamation, and Bones was meticulous about reminding him yet more often, but rarely did Jim feel it so acutely.

"_Jim_?" Spock asked.

When Jim turned, Spock was standing in the doorway to the shared bathroom. As if he were waking up into the very same reality he faced every day, Jim just knew that Spock had been waiting for him in the Captain's quarters, grimly convinced that Jim was going to avoid him. Not that avoidance hadn't been tempting, but Jim wasn't twelve anymore, and he wasn't eighteen either, and he wasn't a coward.

He slowly reached out, a little irrationally worried that Spock would rebuff him or dodge again, but not truly frightened. He trusted Spock too much. Knew him better than that.

Spock waited for the touch to connect, for Jim's thumb to swipe over his cheekbone while the index and middle finger rested about his temple. Then he covered Jim's hand with his own and mirrored to gesture.

Locked in a mimicry of a mind-meld, they formed a complete circle of affection.

I love you, Jim thought, for the first time in peace with the idea. He had played around with it before, of course, and it had been a while since he had truly doubted it, but standing tall, unabashed, unworried, and proclaiming it had never before been possible. Now his feelings appeared self-evident.

"Your sentiment is returned," Spock spoke out loud, worried – Jim realized with unprecedented insight – that Jim's side of the bond was too abridged to receive the message clearly.

Jim had been criminally remiss if Spock wasn't even aware that he could feel and hear and sometimes _smell_ what perceptions Spock sent him. Not quite see, not past the barest idea of a silhouette, but aside from visual data, almost everything could be transferred between them even outside a meld.

"Tell me…" Jim started and then paused. There was something unfair about the request. He could afford unfair, because Spock wouldn't have denied him anyway, but the thought that he would act unfairly toward Spock came with a physical ache.

"What?" Spock inquired. The mind-touch never intensified. Spock never cheated to try and find out the answers, even though he could have. He could have so easily.

Jim blinked.

"Tell me," Spock bid him, smiling ever-so-slightly, relieved and briefly openly half-human.

Jim grinned, light-headed. "Tell me… about the theremin."

Spock's eyes narrowed; the lightning-fast mind analyzed Jim's emotions and expressions and the request in the context of the misstep from a fortnight ago, and came to the unflattering yet spot-on conclusion. It was inevitable. Jim wasn't entirely capable of shame anymore (that had been starved out of him), but he could muster up a bit of embarrassment.

Spock let out a rapid exhale, not quite laughter but close enough. "You are aware, _Captain_, that your jealousy is _absurd_?"

Jim wanted to shrug. He couldn't think of a verbal response that wasn't a smart-ass quip, maybe along the lines of 'more absurd than your aversion to artificial strawberry?' but the last thing he wanted was to cheapen this moment. He might have wanted to lighten it, but not at such a price.

"I don't think it is," he said instead, and sent along as much of pure trust as he managed to filter. He did not want Spock to think that it was in any way a reflection on him.

Spock shook his head. He stepped closer, so close that he and Jim were breathing the same air and the neon lights overhead weren't mirrored in their eyes anymore. _They_ stood in the shadow of _them_. The shadow of one another.

"You see men and women larger than life," Spock asserted softly. "It is commendable, and yet it causes you to lose perspective whenever you become a part of the equation."

Jim untangled the mixed metaphor and this time he did shrug because, yes, Spock had nailed it.

"You wish to compare yourself and Cadet Fitzpatrick?"

Jim didn't, but that didn't stop Spock.

"I could never do so objectively-"

The knowledge of why he couldn't solidified around them, almost tangible.

"-but trust my ability to provide you with a rational assessment of a situation."

Jim trusted that ability and that assessment with his life and the lives of his crew. Occasionally with the fate of the universe, too.

"Conventional human perception of physical beauty would, I believe, put you at circa the same level, and yet I find that the Cadet's smile fails to brighten the room. As far as intelligence is measurable, you outstrip the Cadet to the exclusion of valid comparison. When it comes to musical talent, she has little competition in you, I fear, yet her familiarity with poetry extends barely past _The Hollow Men_."

Jim bit his lip, grinning. No bad Klingon poetry from Breena, then.

Spock came yet closer, his voice sank to a yet lower register, and he continued: "The Cadet confided in me that she chose a career in engineering primarily because it would preclude her involvement in landing parties."

Jim scoffed. No landing parties? How could anyone _want_ to be bored?

"You see," Spock said, voice ringing with contentment.

Jim practically plastered himself to the man, not even bothered about the traditional black Vulcan robe thing he was wearing.

"Cadet Fitzpatrick is a bright, capable woman, and I do enjoy conversing with her on a limited scope of topics."

And that, Jim heard as clearly as if Spock had verbalized it, was the extent of his appreciation. She might have been thoughtful and given Spock something that touched his heart… but that was the prerogative of friends.

Jim knew that in certain spheres his development had been arrested a long time ago, so maybe this was about growing up. The majority of people managed to have friends. Because they knew that friends were not a threat. Jim couldn't quite shake the notion that the majority of people were also very stupid and tended to die in ways that were often inappropriately funny… but this was about him and Spock. And Breena Fitzpatrick. And, in a way, also about Leonard McCoy and Nyota Uhura.

It occurred to Jim that he was unbelievably happy.

Since he was still locked in an embrace with Spock, and they gave each other constant emotional feedback, that basically meant that they were both happy.

And that, fuck it – that was what he had wanted.

x

"_Nam-tor rineni-dva, Ang'jmizn_." Spock said, letting himself be dragged along the abandoned hallways of the Enterprise toward the observation deck. _An unfounded supposition, Captain_. He was humorously woozy, and Jim didn't want to stay confined to quarters, because he was afraid that he would take advantage of the situation.

Jim's impulse control wasn't excellent, and Spock was far too tempting like this. Jim never would have dragged him out if there was a chance of being exposed to crewmembers, but an empty Enterprise was their private playground.

"He won't mind," Jim said, as reassuring as he managed to be with all the joy and hilarity bubbling up inside him. Bones was a bear – susceptible to honey.

"_Ma ves'es ritveshik_," Spock maintained.

Jim deciphered that as a compliment to Bones (something about unlimited kindness) that he would definitely not convey to its intended recipient, because it was the kind of thing that was supposed to remain unacknowledged between them. He was pretty sure that, once sobered-up, Spock would have been quite _dissatisfied_ with Jim if he went and translated for him.

They arrived at the observation deck without any more Golic that Jim barely understood.

Bones took a single glance at them and pointedly averted his face to watch the holo flick on the projector that he supposedly used for his job. Jim took that to mean that he was wearing his recently-got-laid face, and while Bones was theoretically happy for him, in practice he wanted to pretend that the entire thing wasn't happening, that he was the inarguably most important person in Jim's life and that their platonic marriage was the most devoted relationship Jim could manage.

Tough cookies.

Jim was a real boy these days, in real love with another real boy (although he didn't deny it would be comedy gold if Spock's nose grew when he lied – talk about Vulcans being unable to lie!).

Spock was more than a little out of it, and Jim considered taking him back to his cabin and leaving him there to sleep it off – but he wanted to sit down and stare at the stars for a while, and he wanted to be with Spock, still uncertain and scared that their re-affirmed bond was too fragile to stop babying it. The solution was simple: he sat down onto the floor with his back to the wall and pulled Spock with him.

Spock followed; he practically curled up at Jim's right side, and after a while of hesitation decided that this place (in Bones presence!) counted as privacy, so he lay down, put his head into Jim's lap and watched the universe orbit them.

Then he chuckled.

Bones sputtered. He turned to look more closely, incredulous, and once he managed to collect his jaw from the ground he hissed at Jim: "See what you did there? Prolonged exposure to you drives even Vulcans barmy!"

Jim snickered as he carded his fingers through Spock's hair. "Yeah, to be fair, it's been a _really intense_ exposure, if you know what I mean-"

"Spock," Bones cut in, wearing his serious business face. "Are you alright?"

"Y'hm opt'm'l, D'ctor," Spock replied, swallowing most of the vowels and stretching out the consonants. _Nash-veh buhfik_, Jim mentally translated, and smiled. Bones could scowl and squawk and ostentatiously cross his arms all he liked, but there was no denying that he cared for Spock in his own, very unique way.

"He was getting wound up about tomorrow," Jim explained, "so I gave him a bit of the _othuash_-substitute you synthesized to help him relax. It might be a little stronger than we expected." He snickered; Spock laughed too, since he had little control over his telepathy and was in enough skin-contact with Jim that he practically half-permeated him.

"Just when I thought I'd seen it all," Bones grumbled, but let it be with the mandatory admonishment to Spock: "You tell me the instance you start feeling off, Mister."

Instead of replying, Spock closed his eyes. Jim could feel him sinking into doze, and then into slumber, and he kept his fingers in Spock's hair, only perhaps his little finger was inconspicuously brushing the meld-point under the outer corner of Spock's eye. Pure coincidence.

"Finally," Jim breathed, and lent back.

Bones punched his left shoulder in retaliation for being subjected to the slightest hint of domesticity, but he did it gently enough to not disturb the sleeping Vulcan.

"He was running himself ragged," Jim replied to the unspoken question. It lacked the descriptiveness he wanted to employ, but he knew Bones would have loathed hearing about the details – particularly when it concerned failed seduction attempts and Spock's firm determination about leaving Jim behind on board tomorrow. Which was _not_ going to happen. "He keeps trying to do my job in addition to his, claiming that I'm still recovering… whatever _that_ means."

Bones rolled his eyes and mimed waving a hypo at Jim. He could express himself very clearly when he wanted to.

"I've gotten us out of a hairy hostage situation with a concussion and three broken ribs," Jim pointed out, ignoring his friends muttered "and bleeding internally, damn suicidal idiot" which Bones didn't use as an argument mostly because Jim's solution really had been the best one at the time and everyone had acknowledged that at the debriefing afterwards. "I'm fine, and you know it. I'm beaming down tomorrow and getting this whole matter wrapped up. You said you wanted both Cadet Brent _and_ Cadet Sanchez."

Jim's best friend grimaced, but didn't deny the implication. "What can I say? Kid's good at what he does. I can train him up to be a fair trauma surgeon – take that enjoyment of dissection and turn it into something useful."

Jim leant to the left and settled his chin on Bones' bony shoulder.

Spock dreamt of _sash-savas_. Jim would never get that – and he had gotten the _plomeek_ thing, which, let him say, took a lot of effort. In hopes of getting the borrowed sour taste out of his mouth, Jim moved his hand away from the meld-points and left it tangled in Spock's collar, palpating along the design etched in the thick wool, before his knuckles brushed the skin of the Vulcan's neck.

"I'm going down tomorrow and getting them both for you." Jim hoped that explained why it had to be him, why he couldn't leave it up to anyone else. He didn't doubt that Spock would manage but, fuck, this was his job. The Captain's job. This was what it meant to be him, and he would have to be dying, or at least in a coma, to delegate his duties.

"So long as you don't provoke another gang of xenophobic assholes into shooting you," Bones replied wryly.

Jim rolled his eyes. "It's not like I'm inviting these situations. I've got too much going on here…" His hand might or might not have tightened on Spock's collar.

It didn't matter either way, because Bones could see through him like he was made of glass. "Yeah, think on that. What's the average life-span of a Starfleet officer? Forty-two years?"

Jim refused to think that way. It had been taken into consideration; it had been angsted over; it had been decided that ten minutes of this bond followed by an ignominious death was better than ten years of denying themselves. Apparently, there was a set of circumstances that made Spock take logic, crumple it up, set it on fire… and have it nuked, just in case.

"Oh, come on, Bones," Jim retorted faux-merrily. "People live longer now. Your grandfather lived how long?"

"My Grandfather didn't get repeatedly shot, irradiated, starved, macerated, poisoned and God knows what else."

Jim shrugged. "I don't do it to spite you."

Bones raised his eyebrows at him. "You don't say? James Trouble-magnet Kirk."

"It means 'falcon'," Jim stated, momentarily taking wind from Bones' sails.

"What does?"

"My name. My surname, that is. _Κίρκη_ is Greek for 'falcon'."

The doctor huffed soundlessly; Jim could only tell by the jerking of the shoulder under his cheek. "That why you keep jumping off high places, kid? You keep forgetting you don't got wings. One day we'll find you splattered on the ground and even I won't be able to put you back together."

"I don't think so," Jim whispered, extending the tips of his fingers to stroke lines into the skin of his bondmate's neck. "I've got Spock to keep me from doing anything that stupid."

"You don't have the first clue how much I wish that was true. Except the sad, sad, _tragic_ truth is, that Spock's at least as messed up in his head as you are, and he keeps _enabling_ you." Bones sighed and settled his palm on top of Jim's raised knee. His eyes were piercing blue in the darkness. "Believe me, one day you and the hobgoblin are gonna stand on the edge of some ledge, or in front of the airlock, and you're gonna say 'let's jump', and he's gonna ask 'how high'?"

"He won't." Jim knew this with certainty that couldn't be described in words. He smiled at the stars, for a while utterly content and not in a hurry to be elsewhere, sandwiched in between the two men he had married because he didn't want to imagine living without either of them. "He won't, Bones, because that would mean he was making you be right about him."

x

"This is awfully last-minute," Rand hissed through clenched teeth, juggling an armful of datapads.

Jim caught the one that slipped before it hit the ground. "Relax, Janice. We've still got two days before we ship out."

"Two days!" Rand repeated, glaring at Jim as if he had done something wrong.

"You ever heard the story of how Uhura actually got assigned to the Enterprise?"

The elevator stopped then and Jim gentlemanly held the door open for his yeoman, who huffed at him but didn't say anything. The corridor almost reminded Jim of a starship, except that the ceiling was higher and one side was lined with windows overlooking the Bay. Starfleet had prime facilities, unabashed about showing off to its guests.

"I heard she got into her Professor's pants to get the commission," Rand replied, very quietly to make sure that she was not overheard, but scathingly.

"Nah," Jim replied, which was easier to do for the fact that he knew Spock's motivation for that decision, and it had been sound. "She'd just blown the competition out of the water." Uhura had outpaced her peers in training; on the other hand, she had been pretty much consultation-stalking Spock at that point, and Jim absolutely understood Spock's initial attempt to remove her from his personal sphere.

"Two days," Rand repeated again, for a lack of counterargument. "This could have been done a week ago, if our fool Captain hadn't gotten himself-"

"Careful, Yeoman," an amused voice cut in. "You are verging on insubordination there."

Rand stopped in her tracks a few steps short of reaching the ominous dark grey door of Admiral Wong's office. She stared at the two men standing by the window; they were decades apart, and Jim was sure that she wasn't recognizing either of them.

"I appreciate the Yeoman's candor, Ambassador," Jim said faux-serenely, and delighted in the glint of mirth in the Vulcan's eyes, "since I had to leave my regular Jiminy Cricket guarding the Sickbay."

"Missing the opportunity to gain Dr McCoy's insight is always regrettable," the Ambassador replied, dryly and yet leaving no doubt that he was earnest in his regard for Bones' unique brand of wisdom.

It raised a question of why was the Vulcan watching the cloudy dawn from this particular window. _No such thing as coincidence_, Jim thought but didn't say it.

One point Jim and Spock never agreed on was Doyle. Jim appreciated the adventure; Spock was offended by the pretense of intellectualism, and called especially the Sherlock Holmes books 'poorly thought out and condescending toward the reader', which was a major problem – Jim had seen the way Spock reacted when people tried condescending to him. It was beautiful, but best watched from a safe distance.

Either way, coincidence it was not, and whatever remained, regardless of statistical probability, must have been the truth (or not, but let Jim just say it did).

"Did you have something to discuss with me, Ambassador?" Jim inquired, gesturing Rand to go ahead and make Wong feel like Jim wasn't late to an appointment with her that he had all but demanded simply because he had met an old acquaintance in the hallways and got chatting.

Rand rolled her eyes at him very expressively, pursed her mouth in a manner uncomfortably reminiscent of Chapel, and went forward, heels clacking somehow louder than they had clacked before.

"I was asked to perform an introduction, Captain," the old Spock said formally, joining his hands together. The sleeves of his robe were overlong and flowed together, creating a single tunnel of fabric that hid Spock's hands entirely. "As I felt that a dispensation of such favor was warranted in this case, I would have a minute of your time."

"Consider my minute yours," Jim said easily. Wong's door was soundproofed, and he couldn't hear even the vibrations of voices from inside. It made him a little nervous, but it had nothing on a panicking Betazoid after she had been told in Bones' signature blunt way that she was expecting.

"Then I shall proudly present my friend, Captain James T. Kirk of the Starship Enterprise." He seamlessly changed from an amused buddy to a professional diplomat. "And this young man is Rum Ralf."

"Sir." The boy didn't snap off a salute as would have been proper; he went instead for a shallow bow, which gave the exchange an atmosphere of profoundness. "It is an honor."

"Any relation to Rum Malony?" Jim inquired, fairly certain of the answer he would receive.

"My clan-sister, Captain Kirk. I am to understand she has performed satisfactorily under your command."

"You are to understand… I see." Jim cast a wink-wink nudge-nudge glance at the Ambassador, who pretended not to notice. Apparently nepotism came in all shades and maybe a second eye-lid actually didn't let you see the color of unethical. Clearly, Jim Kirks were bad influence on Spocks, when it came to the matter of strict adherence to rules.

It made him want to grin.

He did not let himself, because the young Bajoran already looked anxious, and the lines on his forehead were steadily deepening. "Rum Malony has not disclosed any information on her service, Captain," he protested. "I would not see her prosecuted for imagined misdemeanor."

"You have alternative sources, then." Jim looked at the Ambassador for confirmation – and didn't receive it.

Rum blinked slowly, faking the textbook façade of a mostly brain-dead stylus-pusher. "As all similar organizations, the Starfleet is heavily reliant on its bureaucratic channels."

"And you stand readily at the mouth of the channel," Jim filled in, beginning to understand.

Admiral Wong's door remained shut. Jim made a mental note to give Rand a bonus. She more than deserved it.

"I used to be a teaching assistant to Professor Gill," the Bajoran explained. "Before."

Before what, was Jim's question, but Ambassador Spock managed to convey through a half-lift of one eyebrow that Jim already knew the answer to that and, well, in context with Malony being designated to serve on the Enterprise in the company of fourteen VCE members, the math was not overly complicated. Jim figured out that someone who ferreted significant confidential information simply by virtue of being at the right place and appearing inconspicuous would have had little difficulty of advancing his 'clan-sister' to a desirable – and deserved, according to Uhura – position.

"I would not worry, Rum-_iki_," the Ambassador assured him. "I am certain that there will be many attractive positions for an individual of your exceptional social intelligence."

Rum bowed. "It is gratifying to hear so from a representative of the High Command, _Osu_."

Jim quelled the urge to snort and almost managed to squash the sarcasm when he observed: "I feel like diplomacy is really where you'd feel at home, wouldn't you say, _Rum_?"

"Captain." The young man illustrated Jim's point by not batting an eyelash and completely disregarding any and all sarcasm. "Ambassador, I shall wait here for the definitive confirmation, but it is most pleasing to see our mutual efforts come to a fruitful conclusion."

"Indeed," the old Spock replied, and there was an odd – uncomfortably familiar – light in his eyes. Jim refused to speculate. There were things he did not want to know.

He watched them leave; the Ambassador steered the young Bajoran with a simple gesture, while there seemed to be a distinct purpose to the way Rum spread his hands – submission and offer, or perhaps a suggestion of openness to an offer.

_Proper_ diplomacy – the kind that wasn't ninety-five percent sheer bull – wigged Jim out. Give him a First Contact mission any day; at least he would not have to face the specter of his own press. Or entirely too crafty old Vulcans.

At least now Jim knew who it was that had come up with the plan of 'punishing' this group of Starfleet cadets for unsanctioned extracurricular eco-lobbyist activities and getting rid of them in one fell swoop by assigning them to the Enterprise – and also who it was that had managed to convince the brass that it was their own genius idea.

Left to his own devices, Jim was out of viable stalling techniques, so he gave in to the inevitable and knocked on the door marked 'Admiral Calcutta T. D. Wong' which in itself was enough of a warning.

Jim didn't know her. He barely even knew _of_ her. From what he had put together, she had without aiming to do it amassed too many brownie points to avoid advancement, and there wasn't anywhere else to advance her but here.

"Come in, Captain," a female voice ordered.

The door opened, with Rand standing on the other side. As soon as Jim was past the threshold, the same female voice said: "Dismissed, Yeoman," and Rand barely had a chance to exchange glances with Jim before she was in the corridor and the door snicked shut between them.

Jim firmly suppressed the part of him that bristled and stirred to kick up shit. He wasn't here to get into a pissing contest with a woman that jump-landed on more planets that Jim had seen in his life. Jim had tried the jump-landing thing once, and it had pretty much turned him off of the parachuting thing for the rest of his life.

The crazy Romulans and the destruction of Vulcan probably played their roles, too, but Wong was still a flinty-eyed bitch, and it was anyone's guess how _she_ had gotten her hands on the final approvals of permanent transfers to the Enterprise. Jim suspected she had intimidated the rest of the brass into it.

"Captain," she said once Jim had entered. Her voice was scratchy, or perhaps gravelly – the voice of a chain-smoker who refused regenerative therapy for her lungs.

"Admiral. Administrator," Jim replied in turn, briefly meeting the eyes of the other woman in the room.

Dana Olson swung half-a-radian there and back in a swivel chair, propelled by the one foot she had on the floor while the other one was tucked under her thigh. Jim had the fleeting thought that things used to be easier when he could take Dana out to a dive and buy her a couple of beers. He had never actually slept with her, but not for a lack of interest on his part. She was just too… put-together to go for someone like him (especially someone like he was four years ago).

"You know why you're cluttering up my office, Kirk," Wong said in accented Standard, implying that she couldn't be bothered to try and hide her feet of clay.

Jim was fairly confident that the answer was 'yes'. The most obvious pretext was that he was supposed to defend his choice of transferred crewmembers to an admiral before the transfer was confirmed. Underneath that was the fact that Jim and Wong had never before so much as met, much less established any kind of 'inappropriate' connection – pretty much a slap in Pike's face, but understated, politically unimpeachable and (although Jim didn't want to admit it out loud) elegant.

"The meeting is under 'consultation – requested personnel' on my personal calendar, ma'am."

Wong gave him a lightning-fast, dark glance, almost reminiscent of his mother.

"I presume that you have questions before you assign my cadets to my ship." The correct word would have been 'reservations', but Jim wasn't here to mince words. He wanted his people, and after what Spock (and the other Spock, too) had been through to get those youngsters to this point, Jim couldn't fail. So he wasn't going to.

He ignored Dana's dubious look and stared at the framed child's drawing hung on the wall behind and above Wong's shoulder. The character in it was presumably Wong herself, and she seemed to be sitting astride a dinosaur. As of yet, Jim had not managed to identify the exact species of the lizard.

"Cadet Malony," Wong said, and pushed a PADD across her desk.

Jim took it, checked the file, and was secretly impressed by Ralf's work. That kid was talented, and not in a way Starfleet would ever publicly endorse. He wasn't going to suffer a shortage of job offers, that much was clear.

"About the rest…" Wong fell silent and tilted her head toward Dana.

"I trust you are familiar with their disciplinary records, Captain," the Administrator pointed out. The projector beamed a series of mugshots onto the wall. Pugacheva looked especially antiestablishmentarian in hers. Very revolutionary. No wonder that Chekov dropped at her feet and asked to be led toward brighter tomorrows. It was the Russia in them.

"I am," Jim replied easily. "I am also uniquely predisposed to judging whether an individual would be a good fit for my crew. And these guys-" He pointed at the holo, which was displaying Cadet Yonn Johnson in a three piece suit (which was a concept too hot by itself, and Jim struggled to not apply it to Spock in the middle of a meeting with a hard-ass Admiral). "-are a really good fit."

"If the goal of the Starfleet was to man the Enterprise with past offenders, you would be entirely correct, Captain."

Jim flashed back to his chat with Pike and struggled not to imply that that was exactly what the Admiralty was doing here. "Paradoxically, Ma'am, for the length of their assignment, I had no disciplinary problems with any of these cadets. The only issue we had concerned Cadets Blonsky and Chester, who, I am informed, had no past disciplinary proceedings against them." Not counting those that had been expunged thanks to Commander Cavanaugh, but Jim couldn't cast any stones there, because that was exactly what Pike had done for him.

"Unfortunate, that," Wong replied, making it seem like she was dismissing the issue as inconsequential, but her scowl said otherwise.

Jim raised his eyebrows. "Indeed. Very unfortunate. Starfleet has adopted eye-dee-eye-see as their credo, and to find such festering bigotry among its ranks is truly a shame."

Dana bit the inside of her cheek to stifle a laugh.

"To be fair, Kirk," Wong said coldly, crossing her hands at the wrist, "it doesn't surprise me to find out that you're in collusion with the Vulcan Embassy."

"Collusion?" Jim affected a surprised face. "No Ma'am. I consider a couple of the Ambassadors to be my extended family, but my assignments don't leave me with the necessary time and opportunity for any serious colluding."

"Very funny, Kirk." Wong's lips thinned, her eyes narrowed, and a vein in her temple visibly pulsed. "I should count it as a blessing that you're not involving yourself in local politics. But being this openly pro-Vulcan is not doing you any favors."

"Who isn't openly pro-Vulcan these days, Ma'am?" Everyone had to claim that they were sympathizers, because the social atmosphere dictated it as the only correct position. "And that is aside from the fact that I am married to a Vulcan." That was very weird to say. Jim was used to talking about his and Bones' matrimony, but there was always the undercurrent of irony, of hilarity, of non-seriousness – because their friendship was priceless, but their marriage license was a hoax. A sham. And he could never take it seriously beyond the personal rights it guaranteed for them.

They weren't even required to share a cabin onboard. Thank God.

The thing with Spock was real, and complicated, and it was weird to reduce it to words comprehensible to other people. People who didn't share their mind-connection. And who weren't a drunk Bones.

"Yes, that has… not escaped our attention." Wong shared a glance with Dana, who shrugged back. "That is also very pro-Vulcan of you, Captain Kirk. Exemplary, one might say."

It took a Jim an few seconds to get the insult in there.

For a moment all sound was reduced to the roaring in his ears. He narrowed his eyes, cataloguing the way the two women sat, calculating how fast they could stand, noting that Wong was armed but Dana wasn't and, all in all, Jim could kill them both in about four and half a second.

He took a deep breath and released it. He felt a smile stretching his cheeks, wide and vicious. "Just as it was very civic-minded of you to have children despite the rigors of your career, Admiral."

Wong went white in the face.

"I am sure it must be hard to juggle motherhood and Admiralty, but then – it does look so very good on the resume, doesn't it-"

"You have made your point, Kirk," Dana cut him off before he committed career suicide over being accused of not loving his bond-mate.

"More than," the Admiral added gelidly. "We are, all of us, but people."

Jim nodded, ceding the point. The victory was completely hollow for Wong, anyway.

Yet another in a long line of people who learned the hard way not to go after Spock when Jim was around.

"We are, Ma'am." Jim tapped the stack of datapads forming a leaning tower in the corner of the expansive desk. "And, Admiral… I'm taking these fourteen."

There had been twenty-one cadets. Two were incarcerated. Rum had been transferred without any song and dance. The fourteen VCE-members were as good as Jim's, too. Three of the other four – who as far as Jim could tell were exceptionally talented by-standers that had gotten caught up in this mess – had already asked for posting elsewhere, and there were way too many requests for assignments to the Enterprise for him to even contemplate forcing people against their will. The fourth VCE-unaffiliated cadet had been kicked out of Medical by Chapel, and sent to the Academy hospital for re-training. The report had read like it was more a clash of personalities than any real problem with competence, but if the kid had gone and pissed off Christine Chapel, he had had it coming.

Dana Olson nervously glanced at Wong. "Jim, you don't-"

"You gave them to me because you wanted to be rid of them," Jim cut in, dispensing with the fake diplomacy. They had already explicitly threatened each other, so this farce was helping no one, just prolonging their suffering. "Alright, then. But if I'm your garbage collector – why are you asking for the garbage back?"

"Captain!" Wong rose to her feet, fists clutched white-knuckled at her sides. "You're talking about people, people whom you're meant to lead-"

"Yes," Jim spoke over her, cool but not at all nonchalant, "that's the difference between us, Ma'am. I talk about them like trash and treat them like people. With you, it's the other way around." He stood too, towering over Wong whose Asian descent granted her less than impressive height even in heels. "If you'll excuse me."

"Dismissed, Kirk."

Jim barely even glanced at Dana on his way out. He would make it up to her later – they were old drinking buddies, and no one would ever convince Jim that there was any line between teachers and students at the Academy, but there was a line between asking a friend for a favor and abusing their affection. He wanted to keep Dana's friendship. Aside from being useful, it was… well, it was one of those things he had been thinking about so much lately.

Friendship.


	12. Chapter Nine: Juice

Chapter Nine: Juice

x

Feeling wrung and raw, Jim ambled out of the building. The warm air outside caused his skin to goose-bump for a while, before he became used to it again.

He wished he was surprised to find a group of people waiting for him. Sulu, he suspected, had been dragged along as a chaperone for the kids, but all the prospective transfers were there, plus what amounted to their plus ones – presumably best friends and love interests, most likely themselves the publicly unknown members of the Vulcan Conservation Effort.

Chekov stooped self-effacingly in between Sulu and Pugacheva. Rum Ralf and Rum Malony huddled together with another Bajoran, who resembled them enough to be a clan member, too. A very young Vulcan girl stood next to Ralf, and by her other side were Sarek and the elder Spock, all three of them ramrod straight and expressionless.

Jim tapped his lower lip, but before he could decide if he was going to let them stew for a while, Sulu read his success from his face.

"I told you so!" he crowed. "That's a month of Rec room chips!"

Chekov handed those over without raising his head. Sarek solemnly congratulated Jim, wished him a long and prosperous life and beat a retreat, obviously uncomfortable in the setting. Jim liked to believe that he knew the guy enough to be sure that if Sarek had any reservations about Jim personally, he would not have bothered to show his face at all.

"He does not do well surrounded by youth," Ambassador Spock remarked, watching the other Vulcan depart. "He never has. Both his sons have suffered for it, in unique ways."

Jim had a private theory that Sarek himself had been pretty screwed up by Skon; that he had tragically lost two wives and he deserved a damn break from the universe finally. It wasn't a topic he wanted to open with the old guy, though.

He had a whole other bone to pick. And he would get to it as soon as he got rid of the nosy crowd of youngsters surrounding them. He would have clapped to get their attention, but it wasn't necessary – they were all watching him closely without any prompting. His mere presence was enough.

He could get used to that.

"Cadet Pugacheva!" he ordered.

The young woman stepped forwards, pulled her shoulders back and faced Jim; the look in her eyes was still dark, but far less aggressive than it had been when she had been interrogated about her alleged terrorist activities.

"Gather your group."

Pugacheva turned her head; most of the thirteen in question did not need any more direction. Fitzpatrick, O'Donnell, Di Sato, Brent and Sanchez formed a line on their _de facto_ leader's right side; Kovac, Loqui, Kasheel, Mad'kov, Pella, Johnson, Ette and Barrows spread to the left, with future-yeoman Tonia Barrows elbowing aside a seven-foot-tall cadet to make enough room for them all. Jim scowled at the cliquing he saw – most of the extraterrestrials were grouped together.

It made sense; they had probably met each other in Humanity 101 and created an alliance against the overwhelming power of mankind, but it was still the kind of isolationism he hated seeing in Starfleet.

Chekov stepped from foot to foot and craned his neck. Jim met his eyes for just a second; that was enough for the Ensign to stay where he was, absurdly attempting to shrink into Sulu's shadow. Sulu kept grinning as if he hadn't had this much fun since he had para-jumped onto a Romulan drill.

"Cadets!" Jim watched with satisfaction as they reflexively drew themselves taller, chests out, chins up. Poster-worthy. "You are assigned to the Enterprise for its first deep-space five-year mission. If anyone has any objections, speak now or hold your peace for at least the next five years."

No one said anything, although Jim could detect muffled snickering from the peanut gallery.

Jim nodded sharply. "You have received orders to your personal PADDs. The shuttle takes off at eleven hundred tomorrow. Anyone not on it will be left behind – and slapped with a dereliction of duty charge. Dismissed!"

There was a while of deceptive quiet as the information penetrated. Then the cadets – former cadets, from today on they were officially crewmen and crewwomen – moved. Contrary to Jim's expectations, they didn't share a celebratory group hug or run off to start packing.

No. They moved in on Jim.

His hand was gripped and shaken, hard; someone almost sprained his wrist. They thanked him, as if it had been him who had saved their lives and their careers – he had helped, sure, but he didn't do it for the accolades. Teary expressions of gratefulness weren't as bad as the whole heroism-related media circus had been after Narada and Nero, but it he was glad when they got it all out and gave him some damn room to breathe.

Ambassador Spock stood aside, conspicuously not-laughing at him.

It was when the crowd – finally – began to disperse that Jim noticed those who had not climbed all over him. Even Brent had come over and, with eyes glued to the ground, muttered something about being much obliged; only Pugacheva had remained back, arms crossed in front of her chest, turned mostly away from Chekov, who was staring at her as though she had ripped out his heart.

"You _should_ thank him," Sulu said – quietly, but in the sudden absence of chattering around him Jim could make out the words.

Chekov sighed, and with visible effort managed to tear away from staring at his girlfriend to look at the pilot, who had taken him under his wing when he was just a teenager put in charge of navigation for a flagship. "You're right, Hikaru. But the Keptin is mad at me."

"You think?" Sulu looked over. For a moment he met Jim's eye. "He didn't look too mad."

"Sometimes he forgets he is mad, vhen he is around Mr Spock," Chekov insisted, hands talking but shoulders hunched forward under the weight of only partially misplaced guilt. "Or, perhaps it is better to say that he gets different mad."

"Then you could start with an apology," Sulu suggested.

Chekov stalled.

"Stay here, then," Pugacheva concluded with disdain. "I am going to talk to him."

She barely took two steps, before Chekov moved in her wake, exclaiming: "_Katya_! _Padazhdi_!"

Sulu watched them go with worry written all over his face. He sought out Jim's eyes once again, mutely asking for reassurance. Jim wasn't sure how he was going to react, but he liked to think he wasn't such a great asshole that he would actually hurt the kid, never mind feeling betrayed.

"Captain…" Pugacheva came to a halt in front of Jim. She tried to keep her composure, tilting her chin yet a little higher, but within seconds her self-assurance flaked away, leaving behind stubborn pride, and the hollowness in her eyes was something that Jim had only seen twice before: on Tarsus, and in the wake of the destruction of Vulcan.

He knew what she was going to ask before she even opened her mouth.

"How can I reimburse you for what you have done for us?"

Dead silence spread around. Most of the cadets and former cadets had already gone on their way, but Sulu, Chekov and Ambassador Spock seemed equal parts bemused and anxious. Jim let the anticipatory silence go on and on, until Pugacheva's hands started shaking, and he felt his answer might just break through her wall of misconceptions on the sheer power of surprise.

"I expect you to perform excellently, and make the Enterprise's assessments look even better than they already do."

Pugacheva went grey in the face. Chekov put his hands on her shoulders, and she feebly tried to dislodge him, but he wouldn't let go. He insisted on supporting her, even as he looked at Jim over her shoulder and tried to convey through a hangdog expression that he felt really, truly guilty about the way things had gone.

Jim raised his eyebrows. "Chekov." Not Pasha – not yet. It would take a while to repair the friendship, but the boy's posting was not in jeopardy. "There will inevitably be instances when you feel that your duty and your conscience are in direct opposition. You will have to make decisions, and sometimes there won't be any perfect solution. You'll deal with the consequences, and move on."

Chekov blinked; his eyes glistened. "I did not mean to… Keptin, I newer meant to cause hurt."

Jim shrugged. "Few really do. I'm not the expert here, but I'm told you say sorry and try to make it up to whomever you've wronged. You've made a good start with your investigation of Commander Spock's case. Keep up the good job, Ensign."

Chekov opened his mouth, but Jim ignored him and continued. "Lieutenant Sulu, take Ensign Chekov and Crewwoman Pugacheva to their accommodations. After that, you are dismissed until eleven hundred tomorrow."

"Yes, sir," Sulu replied, without a hint of levity. Pugacheva went unhappily but without protest, and Sulu dragged Chekov away by the strap of his shoulder bag.

Jim sighed and shuffled off to the nearest park bench; maybe Bones had a point with taking it easy, if a slightly challenging morning was all it took to make Jim want to sit down. He wasn't completely drained, but getting off his feet a spell felt good.

Ambassador Spock sank onto the bench next to him, leaving less than a foot of space between them – scandalous by Vulcan standards yet done unthinkingly out of a habit of years. Jim's mouth stretched in an involuntary smile, thinking of loyalty and affection so ingrained that mere distance or time could not erase it.

"Isn't handpicking people for my crew a little over the top, Ambassador?" he inquired mildly, watching red-uniformed cadets hurry past on their way to their first afternoon classes.

"It was a present, Jim," the Vulcan cajoled.

"So," Jim mused, "you won't give me hints about the kind of cosmic stumbling stones that await in my future, but you're happy micromanaging my life from the sidelines…?"

He didn't need to look; he could practically feel the admonishing look directed at him.

"Please, believe me when I say that I meant to cause you no slight."

Jim gave in and met his unorthodox friend's eye. "Are you avoiding answering my question?"

"It may sound unlikely, but I have truly forgotten this facet of you, Jim."

"Still not hearing an answer," Jim pointed out obstinately. He knew this game. He wasn't likely to win, because his opponent was that much more experienced, but he was damn sure going to give his best.

Spock shook his head in affectionate exasperation. "And to think that I had expected interactions with you to be less frustrating than-"

"You could have at least tipped me off about the _pon farr_," Jim cut in. There was some measure of genuine bitterness there. All was well that ended well, but the danger had been very real, and it seemed to him improvident to not even mention it when the old Spock had to know that it would come up (in fact, it seemed absurd in the light of showing Scotty the transwarp beaming equation).

"About-" Spock abruptly fell silent. After a moment, the full implications of Jim's assertion hit home, and he muttered a soft: "Oh."

Jim chuckled mirthlessly. "Yeah, oh."

"I had not suffered mine until more than a decade later," the Ambassador confessed, with openly expressed chagrin. "But with the _Death of T'Khasi_ and the subsequent complications my race experienced, it was short-sighted of me not to consider the eventuality. I apologize, Jim."

The last cadets sprinted down the path, already too late; Jim knew from experience that a fast runner could make it to the south-side lecture halls in ninety seconds, but according to his chrono these two guys only had about half a minute left.

Good to know that the tradition of slovenliness was being continued by the next generation.

"Alright," Jim relented. "I'll let you off about the micromanagement. This time. If you're in a similar situation in the future, maybe you'll remember that you've got friends here, and you can actually trust them." He was aware of how absurd that admonishment sounded from him, but obviously someone had to say it, and no one else was vying for the dubious honor.

"I do know that." That would have been much more convincing, had the old man not been staring at the skyscrapers of San Francisco when he said it. "If I may ask – I have seen that Spock is well, so I presume you must have found a solution to the _plak tow_. How did you do it?" _Now_ he looked at Jim, eyes sharp and eyebrow quirked.

The question was all the tip-off Jim needed to figure out that their alternate selves had not gone about the _pon farr_ dilemma the same way – but apparently they hadn't had to, since their Vulcan was still intact and this all had happened on a completely different timeline.

"How did _you_ do it?" Jim counter-questioned.

The Ambassador's face darkened. A shadow of guilt and sadness passed over it, and after a short contemplation he briefly closed his eyes and said: "I do know that such an event would be profound and painful. Certainly life-changing. Inherently private." And he left it at that.

It raised a slew of further questions in Jim's mind, but he could take a hint, and he could make a deal – privacy for privacy – so he didn't ask any of them out loud. He actually had very little problem admitting that when push had come to show, he had volunteered to be the sacrificial Captain on the altar of Spock's biological drive – he couldn't imagine how that other Jim could have made a different decision. What kind of asshole was that guy?

"Are you certain Administrator Olson will not experience a backlash, should the true extent of your prepossession be discovered?" the Ambassador switched the topic.

Jim didn't even try to fight it this time. "Dana will be fine. The Admiralty won't deprive themselves of her unique skillset – she's the Sydney Carson of the outfit." He grinned to himself.

"The Jackal?" the Vulcan re-stated, quirking an eyebrow.

Jim's grin brightened. Someone caught his obscure reference, and it wasn't- well, it _was_ Spock. Damn. Sometimes it was easy to just consider him a sort of creepily well-informed favorite uncle, and then he went and showed a bit of what made him so uniquely (could Jim even use the word 'unique' in this context?) Spock.

"Rather less wine-soaked than the prototype, though," he remarked.

Spock faux-solemnly nodded. "That is to be hoped, in light of the Administrator's position and associated duties."

Jim contemplated for a minute or two. "You're siccing her on Commander Cavanaugh, aren't you."

"I do believe that young Rum took the Commander's involvement in the persecution of his family somewhat personally." The Ambassador primly folded his hands in his lap. "Far be it from me to discourage him from exercising his inventiveness."

Jim huffed. He could recognize a polite fob-off when he was given one. "I'll leave it to you, then."

"Indeed, Jim," the old man replied with a ghost of a smile. "As we shall leave to you the exploration of new worlds and new civilizations."

Jim dismissively waved his hand. "Yes, yes, I get it. If I had a credit for every time someone makes a crack about my lack of subtlety-"

"You have other charms, my friend," the old man assured him, sincere and gently mocking at the same time, the way you could be with someone who was implicitly certain of your affection and there was no chance they would misinterpret the teasing.

Jim briefly leant his forehead against the surprisingly soft fabric covering the Ambassador's shoulder. Then he made himself stand up and act like the starship captain he was.

x

Jim had one of Scotty's minions beam him up, and figured that he would go back to his cabin for a rousing afternoon of paperwork. He had barely stepped out of the Transporter Room into the corridor, when he heard the sound of argument.

"Your staff has been responsible for the cadets state of health for the past three months, Doctor. Am I to understand that you do not have faith in the work of your subordinates?"

"There's no damn thing wrong with my damn subordinates, Commander. But the idiots have been down there for a week-"

"All personnel assigned to the Enterprise has exhibited at least above average level of intelligence-"

"But all intelligence goes straight out the window on a shore leave-"

"That is a most illogical assertion-"

"-because they're dumb kids, and they go out and get smashed and come home chock-full of alien bacteria and exotic es-tee-dees!"

Jim watched them with a smile, instantly feeling rejuvenated. He found it to be the height of irony that he had married the 'over-emotional' Bones out of sheer logic, and gotten bonded to 'perfectly logical' Spock due to the pre-existing sentiment between them. Maybe they were the universe's way of showing that logic without love or love without logic didn't work out very well.

Jim couldn't imagine how unlikely it was that he had gotten so lucky and somehow managed to make these two men care about his messed-up ass.

"Anything you couldn't treat on the way out of this solar system, Bones?" Jim inquired.

Both men turned to him, momentarily surprised into silence.

Bones broke it as soon as he formulated a properly scathing statement. "Oh, look who it is. You didn't get shot even a little. I am _shocked_."

Jim rolled his eyes.

"It is, indeed, a most pleasing novelty," Spock agreed.

Jim gaped at him.

So did Bones, come to think of it.

Spock raised an eyebrow. "In the interest of perpetuating this trend, it would perhaps be prudent to not make more enemies for yourself, Jim."

"I agree," Jim replied. "I'm just a little prudence-challenged."

Bones snorted. "Truer words, never spoken."

Jim hated breaking the jovial mood, but there was a thought that had been niggling at him for days now, and he needed to drag it out in the open before their newest reinforcements arrived on board. "Clear one thing for me, Spock: how much did you know about the vee-see-e, and why didn't you tell me?" He didn't have the temerity to act hurt about the omission, but it worried him that they kept keeping such great, potentially life-changing secrets from one another.

The look Spock gave Jim sent Bones scuttling off to the Sickbay to find some neglected inventory to do and not be present for the following conversation. It made Jim feel like he was back in the Academy auditorium, being accused of academic dishonesty by some Ambassador's kid who understood computers far better than he understood people. That had not been a very good time, and Jim preferred not to think of it at all.

"I had not been aware of the existence of the so-called Vulcan Conservation Effort prior to being informed by the Ambassador during your convalescence," Spock said softly, yet insistently in that particular manner of his that hinted that he was able and willing to fight for the truth to be acknowledged.

Jim took a deep breath and tried to shake off the sudden stupor. "I did not expect that. I thought between Fitzpatrick, Pugacheva and Ti Mad'kov you would have found out."

"Our discourse was limited to academic topics in the cadets' respective fields of study. Neither of them is pursuing ecoterrorism as a specialization."

"It's just a hobby," Jim quipped, and then was swept by a wave of relief when Spock simply quirked an amused eyebrow rather than get offended by Jim's assumptions, and even automatically followed Jim inside his – _theirs_ again, still – cabin.

x

"Scotty," Jim implored with rare seriousness. "Can I rely on you?"

Scotty was an eccentric genius, a funny guy, and Jim's friend – to the point that Jim occasionally let him shout and call Jim some fairly creative obscenities without thinking twice about it afterwards – but he was also a member of the Starfleet, and he knew an order when he heard one. And, granted, sometimes orders shouldn't be obeyed, even Jim's orders, but this wasn't the case.

The functionality of the crew was largely a matter of trust – Jim's people trusted their Captain; Jim needed to know that he could rely on his people in return – namely, that Scotty wouldn't just agree and then go behind Jim's back. That was fine for the reconfiguration of the shield matrix, but it would be unacceptable today.

"I get it alright, Capt'n," Scotty nodded, waving a shift spanner around. "It was fun working with the young'uns-"

"I'm not saying to stop working with them," Jim protested, because putting that hurt-and-disappointed expression on Scotty's face was about as bad as kicking a puppy. "I just don't like the idea of creating a machine that can replicate _a person_."

Scotty paused, and slowly turned from a tangle of wires sticking out of the wall to Jim. "I didnae think of it like that." His eyes were wide, shocked.

Jim felt the stirring of hope. "And look, I'd love to have two Scotties to take care of the Enterprise, but I also don't think it would be fair to either of the Scotties…"

"Nay!" the Chief Engineer exclaimed. "You have got me solemn oath, Capt'n. No replicators on my watch!"

"Thank you," Jim said, disarmed by relief. A fly couldn't appear anywhere in the Engineering without Scotty knowing about it, so with the engineer on his side, Jim could be sure that the project wouldn't continue behind his back.

"They're right clever kids," Scotty said, imploring, "but they're just kids. Cannae be wise yet. Have a way to go." He huffed and poked at the wires. "So do I, looks like."

Jim shook his head and clapped his friend on the shoulder. "Don't worry about it. The kids are coming on board today; we're keeping them. And the other thing… took me a while to figure it out, too."

Scotty shrugged. "That's why _you're_ the Capt'n, Capt'n."

x

Jim met his fifteen new permanent crewmembers in the bay. They needed minimal direction to stand in front of him, lined up, at attention, and listen to the generic welcome speech Jim had practically copied from _The Captain's Handbook_, which was a self-help text for starship captains incapable of a smidgen of creativity.

He and Spock shared their contempt for it, and Jim used the speech only because it was awful and he liked to watch people's faces when they were subjected to it.

The kids took it with aplomb of hundreds of hours wasted in lecture halls with less than competent lecturers. Pugacheva kept a poker face; Sanchez was the only one whose expression gradually shifted into a clear-as-day 'what the fuck?!' and Rum directed an unspoken little 'really?' at Uhura, who was silently suffering through the hazing ritual behind Jim's right shoulder.

Uhura very, very quietly moaned in distress.

Jim, because he liked her even though he rarely was willing to admit it, cut off the last third of the monologue and segued almost naturally into: "…and speaking of moral obligations, I've been informed of all the particulars of your science project.

Since he watched them closely, he could tell that with the exception of Rum Malony, all of them were aware of the experiments with replication.

Jim drew himself taller, clasped his hands behind his back and grimaced. "Mr Scott and I agreed that while scientifically interesting, the subject matter is ethically impermissible and heretofore banned from the Enterprise."

O'Donnell went red in the face. He might have found the guts to speak, only Fitzpatrick almost inconspicuously kicked his ankle. He pressed his mouth shut and remained silent.

"If anyone is found continuing work on this project, in any capacity, it constitutes grounds for immediate transfer off the ship."

Pugacheva looked at him like she was contemplating perhaps beginning to believe that Jim was a real person. That made sense. Jim remembered feeling like that about Captain Robert April – sometimes people just seemed too good to be true, and you had to see them do something you disliked before you were willing to try and trust them.

It wasn't exactly bitterness – just a specific sort of life experience.

"Understood?" Jim asked.

"Yes, sir!" the formed cadets replied in a passable unison.

"You have been assigned your accommodations?"

"Yes, sir!"

Jim nodded. "You know the way. Dismissed."

Uhura waited until the last of the group – Rum, who had glanced briefly over her shoulder but decided to talk to her mentor later – was gone, before she slugged Jim into the arm. "Next time, take someone else with you to listen to that drivel. Hundred monkeys with keyboards could create something more inspired!"

x

They were barely out of the Sol system; the first Alpha shift had only just started and Bones had come by with the surprisingly clean results of the newcomers' check-ups, when Uhura straightened at her post and looked at Jim, who was contemplating if anyone would notice him just reading Dickens instead of novelized Starfleet regulations.

"Captain, I'm receiving a transmission from the Admiralty."

"Put it on the screen, Lieutenant," Jim replied and sat up properly in the chair, hoping that he wouldn't come face to face with a blown up version of Komack, who really needed no blowing up.

It, fortunately, wasn't Komack. Jim found himself looking at a trio consisting of Nogura, Barnett and Pike. With the possible exception of Archer (who liked Jim but on some days liked more staying pissed at Scotty about the lost beagle), these three were the ones most sympathetic to Jim. Practically his fanclub.

"Admirals," Jim said, determined to keep it formal, even though he felt all tension draining away.

"Captain Kirk," Barnett replied, casting a quick exasperated glance at Pike who was keeping his mouth shut and looking solemn – aside from the telltale tension around his eyes, which suggested that he was expecting to be royally amused. "You are stopping at Starbase Two according to flight plan."

"Yes," Jim confirmed. "It was either Starbase Two or the Capricorn Chi."

Neither of the three men had any problem with Jim's choice (which was actually Rand's choice, but Jim had agreed with her completely).

"Starbase Two reports trouble from Terpsichore Twelve – possible civil war that might threaten local trade. Details are being transmitted to you."

Uhura nodded. "Receiving, Captain."

"Review the files and send a confirmation, Lieutenant," Jim replied, and turned back to the three admirals. "Our flight plan will be delayed. Mr Spock?"

"Terpsichore Twelve is not far off our course, Captain," Spock said, "however, it is impossible to make predictions as of yet. It will be necessary for us to determine the situation on location before we can estimate the duration of our delay."

"Thank you, Commander." Jim looked up. "Our flight plan will be updated as soon as the data are available. Was there anything else, sirs?"

"Fly straight, Kirk," Nogura said in lieu of a farewell, and logged off.

Pike's eyes moved from Spock to Jim and back. "I've heard there was some tension in the Command team, Jim. I've got to admit, the reports worried me. Do you think you could stay out of the Medical? The _both_ of you?" He cast a strict look at Spock, who appeared to be his usual impenetrable self.

Bones looked mightily gratified, and didn't hesitate to jab Jim with a finger. At least it wasn't a hypo.

"That is always desirable, Admiral," Spock replied coolly.

"Scuttlebutt is," Barnett suggested, "that you're looking for a new ex-oh, Captain. I was putting together a few suggestions for you…?"

That was a sodding lie, and Jim could read it easily in Barnett's face. The guy was just stirring a hornet's nest for a thrill, because he apparently had yet to discover Eyeseen porn. The trouble was that Jim, Uhura, Bones and even Sulu could see the lie – but the rest of the Bridge, most notably Spock himself, could not.

Jim theatrically scratched the edge of his jaw. "Whoever you got that from must not remember Spock that well, because they seem to have forgotten one of his defining qualities: he's awesome."

Uhura spun in her chair to face the console. Her shoulders were shaking, and it looked like she had her hand pressed to her mouth.

Bones' face scrunched up as though he was fighting a headache.

"So I read in your latest assessment report, Captain," Barnett replied dryly, and that wasn't exactly true, because Jim knew how to use Starfleet rhetoric, but sure enough 'he's awesome' was the gist of that report.

"That report," Pike suggested, "is glowing enough to net Mr Spock a promotion and his own ship."

Jim raised his eyebrows at the banter. Pike wasn't the type to mince words unless it got him something he wanted. In this instance, Jim couldn't think of anything else Pike could have been curious about but Jim's newest marriage license. Admittedly, that particular document was worth some gossip.

"You couldn't pry him away from me with a crowbar, sir. He's mine, and I've got the papers to prove it."

Barnett bit the inside of his cheek to stop himself from laughing.

Pike was better inured to Kirks, and managed to keep a straight face. "That is paradoxical. Last I remember, you loudly took exception to 'keeping it in the family', so to say."

So it was about Commander Cavanaugh. Jim suddenly found a great appreciation for the way Ambassador Spock had dismissed him when he had tried to ask. Not knowing anything for once made his life much easier.

"I," Jim said, a picture of hurt pride, "took exception to rampant bigotry and xenophobia that resulted in an assault on superior officer, sir. If that was misinterpreted, I may have to take steps to clear the issue-"

"God above, no!" Barnett exclaimed.

The corner of Pike's mouth quirked up. "For being here less than ten days, you've stirred up enough compost, Captain."

"Give me five years, Admiral," Jim retorted. "I'll be back and stirring shit everywhere I go."

Pike logged off in self-defence.

Barnett tried to project disapproval, and Jim was willing to play along, only Spock ruined it.

There was a spark of something very un-Vulcan-like in his expression, something suspiciously akin to impudence, and Bones obviously caught onto it seconds before Spock spoke, going by the way he choked just as Spock went and proclaimed: "Doctor McCoy, perhaps you would consider derailing _your_ husband."

Bones growled: "Why don't you try and control _your_ bond-mate!"

Chekov sank from his seat to the floor, curled up hidden under the console, stuffed his sleeve into his mouth and proceeded to asphyxiate on his giggles. Poor kid was red like a lobster in the face, but the only sounds that came from him were quiet whimpers once in a while, and the Bridge crew collectively decided to leave him where he was to get it out of his system.

Kids. What could you do?

Jim squeezed his eyes shut, took a deep breath, and put on a mask of smug self-satisfaction. "Guys, don't argue. There's enough of me to go around. Share and share alike!"

It was certainly better than if either of them had laughed into Barnett's face, but Barnett obviously wasn't feeling too charitable about their efforts.

"Kirk… I want an explanation."

Jim looked to the left at Bones, who was pretending to concentrate on his PADD despite the fact that it was showing the percentages of progress on the life-signs-detecting security system Jim was having illicitly programmed for his ship. The he looked to the right at Spock, who retained an air of placidity and faced Barnett without moving a facial muscle. Jim helplessly shrugged. "…I'm irresistible?"

A smacking sound was the only indication that Uhura had slapped her palm to her forehead.

"Godspeed," Barnett replied, and the connection was cut.

Bones groaned. Jim patted his hand, the one he had put on the armrest of the Captain's chair and was now possibly using to hold himself upright. The doctor was also muttering, something along the lines of: "…friends with this damn infant, my heart, not enough to be literally my ball and chain, had to go and antagonize people who have my life in their hands…"

Jim would replace Bones as his best friend as soon as he found friends that weren't a part of the Alpha Shift Bridge Crew… or Cupcake.

Or light-years away.

"…getting shot and ten million allergies and eyes like a damn guinea pig, shit, I promised Jo…"

Alright. Jim changed his mind. He would never, ever, replace Bones as his best friend. He was glad when Uhura caught Bones' attention; it was enough to stop him ranting about things he couldn't affect and make him focus on the here and now. Even if it, in practice, meant that Bones turned his most fearsome scowl on Jim, crossing his arms in front of his chest.

"So help me, James Kirk, if you're demoted and I have to report to that walking computer, I am staging a mutiny."

Jim turned to him. His expression was grave, but his voice rang with forced humor. "I called it, Bones. Hottest threesome in the Starfleet."

The doctor flushed and shuddered at the same time. "I hate you, Jim. Hate you! And your pointy-eared Vulcan, too!"

He stomped off and jumped into the turbo lift, hand rising to slam the door before he remembered that it was automatic.

Uhura managed to not laugh until he was safely out of earshot. Then she let loose, joined almost instantly by most of the present crewmembers.

Jim pouted.

Scotty patted his shoulder in sympathy that was two parts mocking and three parts genuine. "The brass were ready to see you two idiots clash – unstoppable force, immovable object style." He grinned. "Looks like they ain't never seen unstoppable force and immovable object join forces."

"I think," Sulu mused, "that we're getting short-changed. No wedding ceremony? No celebration? Free food?"

"Free alcohol?" Chekov added, probably because his genes were forcing him to.

"Not even a chocolate fountain!" Uhura complained in between chuckles.

Jim suppressed the urge to roll his eyes, took the ribbing the way it was intended – friendly – and turned to the other man at the centre of all the attention.

"May I?" He glanced down at Spock's hand.

Liberally interpreting the marginal change of expression he received in response as tacit permission, Jim joined hands with his husband. In public. All nonchalant-like.

Spock endured it without the slightest sign of protest.


	13. Epilogue: Gravy

Epilogue: Gravy

x

Len and Spock had formed this never officially acknowledged secret club of people who thought James Tiberius Kirk was the pinnacle of the human condition. They were apparently missing a member; after meeting the surreal other-Spock Len found himself almost inclined to believe Jim's cock-and-bull story about Delta Vega … but, shit, a good ninety percent of Jim's life experience was cock-and-bull, and Len had been there for the past five years of it.

So, Len and two Spocks. They wouldn't probably have a secret handshake – Len drew the line at alien make-out sessions – but they could have passwords. A code consisting entirely of eyebrow-lifts and teeth-grinding.

x

"One of these days," Len mused, "I will wake up, and the reality will make sense."

Uhura laughed, free and full of friendly mocking. "Dream on, Doctor."

"I'll drink to that," Chapel agreed, and raised her cup of tea.

Rand softly snored into the back of the couch, prompting Chapel to make clucking noises at her.

Len drained the rest of his coffee and glared at his PADD. He had been trying to figure out this formula for weeks now, but in between his duties and Jim-related emergencies, there hadn't been any spare time to devote to original research.

It had been a fraught few weeks, and he still wasn't entirely sure what had happened. No one seemed eager to enlighten him.

Chapel craned her neck again to watch over Len's shoulder whatever was going on behind his back that attracted the women's attention. Uhura followed her example a moment later. Much as he disliked admitting that he noticed, Len couldn't ignore it anymore. Over the past twenty minutes, more and more heads turned in that direction.

There wasn't even a holo projector there-

But there were the Captain and his First Officer, playing a very boring game of chess, he discovered, much to his disgust. And he was very glad to find that they were keeping within the limits of public decency, but that didn't explain why their crew seemed to find them so damn riveting.

They weren't touching. Even their legs were all accounted for, so there was definitely no ankle action going on under the table. It might have been a perfectly professional situation, if not for the fact that Jim was included in it.

Len tried not to look at them; he honestly did. But the chemistry puzzle he was tinkering with didn't arrest his attention nearly as well as he had hoped it would, and he kept indeliberately glancing over to the pair of pains in his posterior before he realized that he had raised his head.

Jim extended his hand to move a piece, hesitated, and changed his mind. Tendons visibly shifted in his wrist as he bent it, plucked a bishop out of the attack platform and removed it to the fixed neutral level. His eyes snapped up – he looked through his eyelashes, silently daring Spock to figure it out.

Benzene…? Len mused. He glanced down, but the schematics blurred in front of his eyes and he just caught the tail end of Spock's move; the Vulcan tilted his head back, exposing his throat.

Jim's eyes narrowed, and he very slowly lowered them to the attack platform again, seemingly fascinated by the way Spock gripped a knight and lifted it off the board. The piece was posted elsewhere, and Spock had barely retracted his hand, when Jim was already responding to the move-

-and Spock rapidly responded to that one, hands passing each other with a half-inch of distance between them.

If Len had had a pillow, he would have attempted to smother himself.

Jim exhaled, a hint of smile playing around the corners of his mouth, and nudged a pawn one square forward. Then he tapped his queen, which had been taken earlier and placed at the edge of the table.

Spock briefly closed his eyes, almost like a prolonged wink, and settled the black king on its side. Jim rose from his chair and stepped to the side of the table, hips swinging in typical Kirkian victorious swagger.

Spock scratched the corner of his mouth with his thumb, eyes trained on the chess set, trying to reverse-engineer the whole game and figure out where it had gone wrong for him, or whatever it was pointy-eared goblins did when they lost.

Jim gathered the pieces and put them into a velvet-lined box, which he shut and locked with a quiet snap. Spock grabbed the board-set and together they left the Rec room, door hissing shut behind them.

"Is it just me," Christine said into the ensuing silence, "or was that pornographic?"

A wave of quiet groans, whimpers and embarrassed coughs tried to imply disagreement, but fell flat.

Uhura shook her head and trained her glassy eyes onto the screen of her PADD, but admitted: "It's not just you."

"_Chess_ is your idea of erotica?!" protested a Security officer from the next table, more or less echoing Len's thoughts.

Uhura chuckled. "It didn't use to be."

Len refused to contemplate that one.

Benzene. Right.

x

Jim and his pointy-eared shadow resurfaced for dinner, and didn't even look any worse for wear, for which Len's appetite was grateful.

Len decided to spoil himself with steak, knowing well that it was bad for him, but today he felt that the accomplishment of not having drunk away his liver yet was deserving of a reward. It was a passable steak – not as good as real, non-replicated one, but compared to a salad it was a little piece of paradise.

He speared a piece of baked potato and felt almost at peace with his station in life, listening to his best friend chitchat.

"…the geology lab fell behind – yes, _by eight point two five percent_, I _did_ actually read your report – but we both know what's going on here. And I'm not saying you should stop." The kid grinned, managing to not show any masticated food, almost like an honest-to-God adult person. "I'm just saying, next time you pick up a personal project that completely screws with the ratings of the departmental efficiency monitoring, you could go for something with rocks, just to make it fair."

Len grinned around his fork.

"I shall endeavour to keep my personal work outside of the performance rating system, Captain. However," the hobgoblin added, "I do not expect to suddenly become fascinated with – _geology_."

Jim nearly blinded the entire table with the shine of his teeth.

"So the Achilles does have a heel," Len observed under his breath.

Jim poked him into the ribs, but had to stifle a chuckle in his fist. "I think Bones is trying to express his happiness at your lack of enthusiasm for medicine?"

"I lack the opportune temperament," Spock dismissed the mere idea. "For me to pursue medicine would be analogous to Dr McCoy studying astrophysics – if one disregards his peculiar phobia of stars."

"I'm not bothered by _stars_, you overgrown Christmas elf," Len retorted, too late realising that he had stuck out his lower lip and pointed his fork at the Vulcan (which might have been excusable when he was eight years old, but certainly wasn't now). He hastily retracted both and inserted twice as much vitriol as he had initially intended into his next statement: "It's the _vacuum_ and the _diseases_ and the _people_ who come to me to have their _limbs attached_ – yes, I'm looking at you, James Kirk!"

Jim and Spock exchanged loaded looks. Spock moved an eyebrow. Jim laughed.

Len rolled his eyes.

"It does continually surprise me that the Engineering Department is not skewing the evaluations," Spock admitted.

"S'cuz Scotty gets creative about reports," cut in Breena Fitzpatrick (whom Len only recognized because he had made it a point to keep appraised about Jim's bouts of madness), carrying her tray to the next table over, which was traditionally a domain of the nurses. "Is this seat free?"

Louise, a tiny but vicious redhead, doubtfully looked the grease monkey Barbie up and down, and then conceded.

"I have seen Mr Scott's requisitions," Spock remarked. Pointedly.

Jim grinned. "Yeah, Scotty's got magic fingers. He makes math look like legalese."

Len was quite sure that Jim wasn't the only captain in the whole blasted 'fleet who was happy that their Chief Engineer had mad skills at defrauding the Federation, but it still made him uneasy – especially after he had seen the rigid adherence to protocol practiced by their First Officer.

Spock placidly ladled the weird, sharp-smelling orange liquid into his mouth.

Jim put down his fork and sighed. "I'd really like some chocolate now, only we're on shift tonight," he muttered mournfully.

The statement broke Len's brain a tiny little bit.

"What's your opinion of mango?"

Some of Spock's vestigial movements apparently conveyed a response to this question, because Jim stood up and went for the nearest synthesizer.

The Bajoran ex-cadet sat down next to Fitzpatrick and sight. "That's sooo romantic."

Len cringed. Sometimes it was painfully, glaringly obvious that some of these kids were still not quite in their twenties. He had learnt to deal with Chekov (Len's Gran would have claimed that the boy was an 'absol-yute dahling'), and he had no choice but to deal with Jim (who kept the Enterprise from unraveling at the seams, so it was sort of necessary to keep _him_ from unraveling at the seams, and Len was still scared shitless of the _vacuum_), but the chit made him want to drown kittens. Ritually.

And yes, he knew that Jim was not really _that_ young, and that in a couple of years he would be pushing the 'big thirty' – good God, that made Len feel like he should be starting to look forward to the retirement that he wouldn't survive long enough to earn – but Len would probably forever see him as the oft-bitten, shy-to-and-beyond-the-point-of-paranoia kid he had met of the shuttle. He would forever want to take on the world for him.

And, sure, he could psychoanalyze himself and his feelings about Joanna and Jim and draw all the lines into one, neat, all-encompassing graph.

And that was shit.

That was _fucking_ shit.

He just loved the kid, okay? Issues or no issues, he loved him. Enough to learn to tolerate the green-blooded menace Jim thought he had domesticated.

Jim came back, carrying a piece of fruit. He attacked it with his knife and managed to slice it into more-or-less even pieces. Half of those he relocated to Spock's tray.

Scowling hard to keep his lips from curving upwards in exasperated fondness at the two idiot geniuses, Len growled: "If you turn out allergic to that, so help me, Jim, I will-"

"Keep me in bed until I die of boredom, I know, Bones."

Len concentrated on his food, since he knew he wasn't going to win that argument. Besides, he already knew damn well that Jim wasn't allergic to mango. He had tested his favorite guinea pig for everything he had thought of. Fruit indigenous to Earth featured prominently.

He came out of his reverie just in time to see the two pains in his posterior dispose of their trays and walk toward the exit. _Spock_ reached out.

Jim took the offered hand and, they just went on like that, hand in hand, so, really, no one could have taken it ill of Len when he had clenched his fists and exclaimed: "Jesus Christ, Jim! Stop macking on him in the hallways!"


	14. Bonus: Lemonade

A/N: Thanks for your support, everyone who reviewed the story or added it to your alerts/favourites! I hope you enjoyed it. Don't be shy about letting me know what you think. Cheers!

Brynn

x

Bonus: Lemonade

x

"You say this he-thing belongs to you?" asked the priest, pointing his red-hot branding iron in Jim's direction.

Jim wanted to edge further away, but the manacles didn't have any more give in them. Already his shoulders were awkwardly twisted and beginning to kind of hurt.

"Indeed," said Spock.

"He's not marked," the priest pointed out suspiciously.

"Our people stamp marks directly on the mind," Spock replied coolly. "We need not disfigure what is ours – every person capable of telepathy can perceive it clearly."

All technically true, Jim thought, and stomped down the urge to smile. They could debate the philosophy of ownership at another time.

The priest set down the iron and rubbed his chin with two fingers. "None of us can access the mind of another. There is none who can verify your claim."

"I caught it!" insisted the rat-faced man who was the brain of the hunting party. "It's mine!"

"It would not be the first time you hunted tame things, Rhaksi!" the priest snapped. Some of the watchers snickered.

"This _he-thing_-" Spock pronounced the words with almost palpable distaste, "-is mine. He shall be returned to me, unless you doubt my word. If you do – then it is a matter of honor." Spock looked around the room, meeting eyes of the men and women standing there one by one. None seemed willing to fight him, much less for a single slave.

"A sworn oath will satisfy Rhaksi's curiosity, I am sure," said a woman in the shadow of a statue of an Amazonian. She was not quite cleaning her nails with the big, sharp knife in her hand, but she wasn't far from it.

The priest nodded and gestured to Spock.

"I do… _swear_ that h- _it_," Spock corrected himself, "is mine."

"You must swear by the idols of your people!" the priest insisted.

That sounded like a bit of a problem, and Jim hoped that Spock would feel it prudent to dispense with his inbred compulsive honesty for a moment because, Jim felt, looking at all the candles and statues of warrior gods and goddesses around, these people didn't much look like the kind that would understand the worshipping of logic, rationality and peace. Also, there was the matter of slavery. Must not forget about the slavery.

Jim didn't really doubt his friend. Spock was so smart it was scary just seeing it written on a computer screen – meeting it in action was often awe-inspiring.

Spock folded his hands behind his back, drew himself as tall as possible, thrust out his chest and took a deep breath. "I swear," he proclaimed solemnly, "by Grabthar's Hammer and by the sons of Warwan."

In the following silence Jim bit so hard on the inside of his cheeks that he tasted blood. Some of the sheer terror must have shown on his face – the locals misunderstood it and happily remanded Jim into Spock's care.

x

Jim managed to amble out of the village under his own power, but he was very happy when they were finally out of sight of the natives and Spock sat him down, employed touch-telepathy to skim Jim's body for injuries – or so he would have claimed; Jim preferred to put his own spin on the examination – and proceeded to confirm his findings with a tricorder.

Jim couldn't hold still long enough for the readings; he had to finally give in to the laughter, or he would have ruptured something.

_By Grabthar's Hammer. By the sons of Warwan_. Of all the things Spock could have said.

He quelled the giggles enough to say: "I love you so much right now. Please, marry me."

"Open channel, gentlemen," Uhura's voice chided in a faux-professional tone, but was mostly drowned out by Bones pained exclamation of "Jim!"

Spock's eyebrow barely twitched. "That would be illogical, Captain, seeing as the Federation Charter guarantees legal reciprocity, and by Vulcan and Terran law we are, in fact, already married."

Jim smiled, but kept his mouth closed, because he didn't want Spock to see the blood on his teeth.

_You worried me_, Spock's touch conveyed, but there was also the elation of a danger defeated – an addiction they shared. However much they occasionally wanted to take it ill of one another, they couldn't.

They chose a life that would keep giving them lemons – Jim maintained it was because they actually liked lemonade, even if Spock would never admit to it and Bones would hide behind his bottle of Saurian Brandy and look sour. Which just went to show how right Jim was: no one argued.

"You're the king of trolls, Spock," Jim said happily, while Spock fiddled with the tricorder, ascertaining that it was safe to beam them up. "Seriously. I will pledge my loyalty-"

The corner of Spock's mouth twitched. "I understood that was what you mean by proposing marriage to me."

Jim smiled wide enough to hurt his cheeks, grabbed the nearest hand and squeezed it. "I absolutely did."

Out of the comm came Uhura's faux thoughtful: "…I'm not sure they know what 'open channel' means…"


	15. Bloopers: Champagne

This flotsam sprang up spontaneously along the creation of the horrible monster that is Falconry. Most of them are probably only funny after the third glass of wine.

You have been disclaimed.

x

Bloopers: Champagne

x

"And do you know the one about Vulcans? How do Vulcans do it?"

She must have been even drunker than Len, because she just giggled and shook her head.

Len pulled out his most deadpan voice to deadpan: "_Logically_."

Her gigglesnort was interrupted by a dry: "You are in error, Doctor."

Len scowled at the pointy-eared hobgoblin. "Damn it, Spock, it's just a jo-"

"Vucans do it to the _best_ of their ability."

The bastard walked away. Len would have probably stood there staring at his back for a while yet, only Jim turned up out of nowhere and muttered something that sounded like 'burn', so Len glared thataway.

Jim grinned at him. "They really, really do."


	16. Bloopers: Brandy

A/N: So, the thing is, when I write, I'm not always exactly sober. Case in point.

x

Brandy

x

"Bones, Bones, I just realized what this is! VCE! _Vulcan Conservation Effort_. You know what it is?"

"What, Jim?"

"SPEW!"

"… maybe don't have another glass, Jim."

"No, no Bones! Early twenty hundreds' classic lit! Harry Potter! It's the _Society for the Promotion of Elvish Welfare_!"

"You know what, Jim? I'll have the glass if you don't want it. Hmm, maybe I really should cut you off…?"

"Killjoy. You wouldn't know quality extremism if it made off with your last bottle of Saurian brandy."


	17. Bloopers: Vodka

Vodka

x

"Rest assured, Jim-"

Spock, the allegedly emotionless Vulcan, could actually do a perfect Mona Lisa smile.

"-considering that a _wilful betrayal_ would barely be capable of harming the bond, your episode of overwrought concern had no deleterious effect."

Jim slurped his virgin Sex on the Beach. "So… in Standard, you're tolerant of and amused by my temper tantrum."

"I am gratified to see that you have not been stripped of your disarming candor and instances of utter self-absorption."

Jim slurped some more. He wasn't pouting. That was just his lips sucking on the straw. "…you're telling me I'm selfish."

"Jim, we are both of us greatly selfish. We put this feeling before our duty – and when our duty is to seek out new worlds and new civilizations-"

"For explorers and adrenaline junkies like us, that does sound pretty self-serving." Jim smiled his version of the Mona Lisa smile, which was less mysterious and more just fear-inducing.

"Indeed," Spock replied, unaffected by Jim's smile, which basically labeled him as clinically insane. "Although, Captain, considering that my body does not produce adrenaline, may I suggest the use of the word 'adventurer' instead?"

"Yeah, Cantrell wrote something about hormones. Speaking of-"

In all fairness, they did turn up on time for Alpha shift on the next day. If barely.


	18. Bloopers: Marrow

Marrow

x

Carol bemusedly stared at the people around her, trying to retrace the conversation and figure out where she had lost the plot. "I thought the Commander and Lieutenant Uhura… oh."

"Yeah, _oh_."

Jim gaped. "How can anyone be that behind on scuttlebutt? She's been on board for a week now…" He didn't want to have a cause to reevaluate the newest Weapons Expert's observational abilities this early into the mission, and that was without taking into account the fact that she was an Admiral's daughter. A discredited Admiral's daughter, sure, but 'discredited' didn't mean that he didn't have a lot of friends in the Starfleet Command left.

Too bad that Scotty, Riley, Fitzpatrick and O'Donnell couldn't man Engineering by themselves.

"Hmm…" Nyota tapped her chin with one finger and thoughtfully regarded Jim and Spock. "Strangely, looking at you through the eyes of a stranger that can't actually read just how besotted the both of you are… you are not exactly demonstrative. I can see how most of the ship doesn't know – beyond a few rumors."

"Spock's a Vulcan," Sulu deadpanned.

"But the Keptin is never been much discreet," Chekov pointed out.

Spock raised an eyebrow. "In my experience, the Captain is much more discreet than what security demands, and much less so than would be prudent."

Jim grinned. Spock had him pegged. Heh, _pegged_. Now, if only he could orchestrate some privacy for them…


	19. Bloopers: Grease

A/N: Thank you for your reviews and favouriting this story. This should be the last installment (for real, I mean it this time). Enjoy.

Brynn

x

Grease

x

"_Nam-tor la-wak tan_," Jim claimed.

"_Nam-tor la-wak ta'an_," Spock argued, gazing into Jim's eyes.

Jim laughed. "The present is a present is a present."

Spock raised an eyebrow. "Has this become a game of wit?"

"Too much math there to make it a word game," Jim professed, shrugging one shoulder.

Spock contemplated for a few moments. His eyebrow gradually sank until both were in alignment. Eventually, he decided on saying: "Lowercase oh, underscore, zero."

Jim's jaw dropped. "That was so meta of you…"

"I applied the logic of-"

"The three-dimensional chess," Jim filled in breathlessly. Then a blithe grin spread over his face. "Less than three, Spock."

There was a pause, while the audience tried to wrap their heads around the exchange. Then Spock flushed viridian, and most of them decided they did not want to know.


End file.
